Hot,congested, crowded and diverse: Emerging research agendas in planning

This special issue explores emerging research agendas in planning. It brings together scholars from diverse schools working on new areas of research and application in urban design and planning. Emergent research agendas include both novel areas of research and important shifts in the direction of a research area. The challenge for planning schools is to reflect critically on these changes and develop long-term research agendas that can better position our field in society and academia, and provide a basis from which to assess our academic programmes. The chapters presented in this issue reinforce key aspects of planning: multi-scale, and multi-faceted, yet integrative in its intent, stressing the physical, yet inescapably social. At the same time, they identify research areas that respond to major social and environmental changes. Blanco and Alberti focus on the latest findings in climate change science and on planning for adaptation; they highlight the opportunities that planners have to provide leadership in this area. Forsyth, Krizek and Rodríguez take up the issue of non-motorised travel, a topic of increasing interest for urban designers, public health experts and transportation and energy planners. For Talen and Ellis, an emerging challenge is the need to plan for diverse and compact communities. What social factors, policies, programmes and planning processes facilitate compact and diverse communities?     

‘The planned city sweeps the poor away…’: Urban planning and 21st century urbanisation

In recent years, attention has been drawn to the fact that now more than half of the world's population is urbanised, and the bulk of these urban dwellers are living in the global South. Many of these Southern towns and cities are dealing with crises which are compounded by rapid population growth, particularly in peri-urban areas; lack of access to shelter, infrastructure and services by predominantly poor populations; weak local governments and serious environmental issues. There is also a realisation that newer issues of climate change, resource and energy depletion, food insecurity and the current financial crisis will exacerbate present difficult conditions. As ideas that either ‘the market’ or ‘communities’ could solve these urban issues appear increasingly unrealistic, there have been suggestions for a stronger role for governments through reformed instruments of urban planning. However, agencies (such as UN-Habitat) promoting this make the point that in many parts of the world current urban planning systems are actually part of the problem: they serve to promote social and spatial exclusion, are anti-poor, and are doing little to secure environmental sustainability. Urban planning, it is argued, therefore needs fundamental review if it is to play any meaningful role in current urban issues.     

城市高温灾害的规划应对研究进展

随着全球气候不断升温,城市高温 灾害越来越严重,严重影响城市人居环境。 通过CNKI和Web of Science检索城市高温 灾害相关文献,采用Met a-a na lysis方法和 CiteSpace工具,分析近年来城市规划应对高 温灾害的研究进展。结果发现,城市高温灾 害的规划应对研究起源于城市热岛方面,在 气候变化方面得到发展,最后形成城市高温 灾害的研究。在减缓性策略与适应性策略两 大主题下,主要应对途径是土地利用、空间 结构、道路交通、绿化景观以及建筑等,每种 途径又分为多种具体策略。目前在规划体系、 针对性规划以及效益评估等方面存在明显不 足。在理论上应加强构建规划体系,以及效 益评估系统的研究;在实践中制定应对高温 灾害的规划编制标准,探索气候友好型城市 规划设计方法,为韧性城市建设提供参考。     

Climatic city: Two centuries of urban planning and climate science in Manchester (UK) and its region

This paper traces the history, and current challenges, of climate science and urban design in Greater Manchester, UK. The Mancunian metropolis is a remarkable example of a ‘climatic city’, one that shapes its climate as much as it is shaped by it. From the efforts to control smoke and clear slums in the 19th century, to today’s race to be at the forefront of ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ cities, climate is a central actor in Manchester’s history and will likely be so in the near future. We analyse the continuities and inflections of this history of climate science and urban planning in the metropolis by drawing on historical material and interviews with key local stakeholders, to understand the natural, social and political construction of this singular ‘industrial ecology’. Ultimately, we ask whether stakeholders in the Greater Manchester area can overcome existing challenges to go towards a greener, more resilient and sustainable city.     

减缓·适应——应对气候变化的若干规划议题思考

通过对气候变化与城市规划关 系的辨析,阐述了应对气候变化的规划内 涵,构建了应对气候变化的规划研究框 架。从能源利用、交通与土地使用、建筑 设计与管理、水资源管理、固废处理、旧 材料利用等方面提出了减缓气候变化的 若干规划议题;从温度变化、海平面上 升、降雨模式变化、热带风暴等方面提出 了适应气候变化的若干规划议题。提出 将应对气候变化规划与法定规划体系有 机整合,是当前城市规划行业急需解决 的问题。     

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.     

基于地质灾害风险评价的山地城市规划应对策略* ——以石棉县总体规划为例

山地环境脆弱性导致的地质灾害风险是山地城市规划需要密切关注的问题之一．本文以石棉县总体规划为例,探索了基于地质灾害风险评价的山地城市规划应对策略,提出了以区域生态安全格局构建、城镇体系适应性布局、中心城区空间规划灾害应对（选址,密度分区,防灾空间建设）、建设用地灾害点安全治理为主线的系统性规划应对策略。     

Transport and mobility in sub-Saharan African cities: An overview of practices,lessons and options for improvements

Urban mobility is increasingly becoming one of the planning and development issues for cities in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region. Sub-Saharan cities are growing fast, outstripping the current transport infrastructure. Despite the population and spatial growth, many cities are defined by inadequate planning, rapid urbanisation and deteriorating transport infrastructure and services. In most sub-Saharan African countries, modes of urban mobility are highly dependent on income. Transport options are limited. In fact, walking and cycling are often the main means available for the majority of city commuters. Little effort is made to develop a range of transport options or to improve bike or walking paths. Combined with traffic jams, poor governance and the increasing cost of living, public transport mobility in sub-Saharan cities is having a tremendous impact on their liveability and citizens development aspirations. This paper argues that inclusive and broad ranging transport planning must be prioritised in SSA cities to improve the capacity of citizens to participate in work opportunities as well as to fulfil their daily domestic needs. Using observations and comparing progress in other countries and regions, we note that the majority urban poor, women in particular, are often bearing the brunt of inadequate planning and transport provision. We note that urban planning and transport infrastructure should therefore be (re) designed with particular focus on the wellbeing of the poor. The paper thus ends with a range of suggestions on what planning, design and policy options might be available to better integrate various commuting modes into urban planning infrastructure. In doing so, the paper notes that safety and security are critical elements of improving urban and spatial transport planning in the sub-Saharan Africa region.     

Restructuring and repositioning Shenzhen,China's new mega city

Shenzhen, a new mega city founded under China's ‘open door’ policy, has experienced dramatic urban development over the past 30 years. From humble beginnings as a fishing village before the 1980s, it benefited from locational advantage next to Hong Kong, an autonomous city with a global role in finance and trade. Shenzhen was first among cities in China to adapt the capitalist world's urban development practices to an indigenous, centrally controlled land management system. As a new city, Shenzhen may best represent the role of planning in a time of economic transition. Urban planning in Shenzhen was ambitious in its reach, using ‘experimental reform’ as a vehicle for institutionalising changes in management of the land resource. These reforms became generalised in China, leading to a recent decline in academic investigation of Shenzhen. While the city as ‘reformer’ seems to have run its course, new challenges upset the old assumptions and call for more research. Today, as industry moves inland away from increasingly costly coastal areas, the city is grappling with the need to restructure its economic base. The city has undertaken major infrastructural projects in a bid to secure its role as a major transhipment hub and logistics command centre, while also developing a rail-based mass transit system. The regeneration of disused industrial land and ‘urban villages’, built up to accommodate at low cost a huge factory workforce, are important ongoing city programmes. While the city extends its infrastructure to connect more effectively with the rest of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and with Hong Kong, more fundamental questions surround its role within a restructuring regional economy. Ambitions for international stature, bolstered by a large and young population base, a world-class port and modern facilities are challenged by a rapidly evolving regional economy.     

Resilient cities: meaning, models, and metaphor for integrating the ecological, socio-economic, and planning realms

Urban designers, ecologists, and social scientists have called for closer links among their disciplines. We examine a promising new tool for promoting this linkage—the metaphor of “cities of resilience.” To put this tool to best use, we indicate how metaphor fits with other conceptual tools in science. We then present the two opposing definitions of resilience from ecology, and give reasons why one is more appropriate for linking with design. Additional specific tools and insights that are emerging from, or being increasingly used in, ecology can further support the linkage with urban design. These include recognizing the role of spatial heterogeneity in both ecological and social functioning of urban areas, the integrating power of watersheds, social and ecological patch dynamics of cities, the utility of spatial mosaic models to capture function, the use of an integrated “human ecosystem” modeling framework, and the consequent perspective of metropolitan areas as integrated ecological-social systems. Three additional tools are related to the adaptability of people and human institutions. First is the recognition of a “learning loop” in metropolitan ecosystems in which people respond to and affect ecological change, the use of urban design as experiments whose ecological and social outcomes can be measured, and finally the potency of a dialog between professionals and citizens, communities, and institutions, to support both research and design. The metaphor of resilience, and its technical specifications, draw these diverse strands for linking ecology and planning together.     

Towards Effective City Planning—The Case of Cape Town in Identifying Potential Housing Land

Vacant land in cities is an important resource as it presents opportunities for urban renewal and revitalisation and can contribute to municipal revenue. In a context of growing informality and homelessness in cities of the South, the presence of large tracts of vacant land is a sign of inefficient urban planning and a dysfunctional land market. It is therefore critical for local governments to have reliable data of the extent of vacant land parcels in cities and their potential for housing development, particularly affordable housing for the poor. This paper will detail and discuss the “Potential Housing Land Model” developed by the Cape Urban Observatory, part of the African Centre for Cities, based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. South African cities, and in this case the city of Cape Town in particular, face huge constraints in terms of suitable, well-located and affordable land for low-cost housing development. A tool like the “Potential Housing Land Tool” is one tool which could assist decision-makers in identifying such land parcels. Besides identifying land that can potentially be used for housing; the model can also allow officials to pin-point areas that are not well-serviced. The deployment of the model on the World Wide Web makes the tool available to a range of users including municipal officials, academic researchers and organised sectors of civil society who might benefit from this kind of information. The responsible and strategic use of this model and the information it provides, can facilitate a broad-based discussion about vacant land and its potential use in the city, allowing for more transparent and participatory planning. The application of tools like the “Potential Housing Land Tool” can therefore greatly assist in improving urban governance and can contribute towards more efficient and sustainable urban planning and management systems.     

我国城市综合防灾规划编制体系若干问题探讨

为了保障我国快速城镇化进程中城市的综合防灾安全,探讨了我国综合防灾规划编制体系与相应层面重点解决的内容。通过对国内外综合防灾规划实践的调研与分析,结合我国城市规划管理与编制体系现状,将综合防灾规划分为防灾战略研究、总体规划中综合防灾规划、综合防灾专项规划以及单灾种防灾规划4个过程,并重点针对总体规划中综合防灾规划的编制内容进行了探讨。     

Establishing Priorities for Urban Green Infrastructure Research in Australia

Green infrastructure (GI) is a vital asset for sustainable cities, but an interdisciplinary approach must be taken if multifunctional and socially acceptable GI is to be developed. Here, we present the results of a workshop process to connect researchers and practitioners across academia, industry, and government and to enable a multidisciplinary group of participants to coalesce on a set of cross-cutting issues and prioritise a research agenda to address and advance GI research and uptake in Australia. We found that many of the challenges were ubiquitous across regions and scales, but research in a few key priority areas could advance GI across multiple cities. The key research areas were: Attitudes & Perceptions of GI; Increasing Biodiversity through GI; Optimising Spatial Configuration and Composition for Multiple Benefits; Economic Valuation of GI; Metrics, Models and Tools for Benchmarking Assessments; and Turning Research into Policy and Implementation. Although participants saw that there were many synergies across the research topics, there were challenges of translating the science for decision making and of establishing long-term institutional collaborations. However, urgency for sound evidence to support policy development and planning will require an interdisciplinary process to be maintained so that clear communication can be established across sectors.     

Does Policy Research Really Matter for Local Climate Change Policies?

This paper examines the role of policy-relevant research in climate change policy development. It attempts to address a practically important question: does policy research actually make a difference in the processes of formulating and institutionalizing local climate change policy? Two case studies from Central Java Indonesia are presented. The analysis focuses on the policy development processes in the cities of Semarang and Pekalongan, both of which were based on an urban climate vulnerability assessment. We discuss and compare the policy-making processes in terms of three analytic dimensions: the type of policy measures, agent, and policy approach. We examine the relationship between assessment outcomes and the efforts to institutionalize climate change policy in the two cities. These case studies show that although policy actors in both cities have developed strategies and policy measures for addressing climate change, the quality of policy-relevant research was a marginal consideration in the policy formulation processes. An established agenda within a policy network had greater impacts on policy-making than research outputs, which were articulated and used in the context of this agenda. Advocacy coalitions re-defined and re-interpreted what research has shown. Understanding this ability is key to ascertain why or why not policy-relevant research matters.     

城市片区色彩设计方法探讨——以攀枝花城市色彩规划为例

近几年许多城市为了防止色彩污染都相继进行了城市色彩规划编制,但是在实施的过程中发现基于宏观层面的规划很难得到有效的执行,本文借攀枝花城市色彩规划为例从微观角度探讨片区色彩设计的意义,通过调研当地自然气候、环境色彩、建筑色彩以及问卷等方法,从可操作层面对城市片区进行色彩设计,使城市色彩规划工作更合理、更易实施。     

Local experiences of urban sustainability: Researching Housing Market Renewal interventions in three English neighbourhoods

Ideas and thinking about sustainability and sustainable development have permeated over the last decades into most disciplines and sectors. The area of urban studies is no exception and has generated an impressive body of literature, which aims to marry ‘sustainability’ and ‘urban development’ by grounding the many interpretations of sustainability in an urban setting. This has taken many forms and inspired a range of initiatives across the world including ‘healthy cities’, ‘urban villages’, ‘millennium communities’ and the ‘mixed communities’ movement. Moreover, urban regeneration has come under considerable scrutiny as one of the core mechanisms for delivering sustainable urban development. At the most basic level, it can be argued that all urban regeneration contributes to a certain extent to sustainable development through the recycling of derelict land and buildings, reducing demand for peripheral development and facilitating the development of more compact cities. Yet, whether urban regeneration bears an effect on urban sustainability is an underresearched area. In addition, little is known about these impacts at local level. This paper aims to extend our understanding in these areas of research. We do so, by taking a closer look at three neighbourhoods in Salford, Newcastle and Merseyside. These neighbourhoods underwent urban regeneration under the Housing Marker Renewal Programme (2003–2011), which aimed to ‘create sustainable urban areas and communities’ in the Midlands and North of England. Approximately 130 residents from the three areas were interviewed and a further 60 regeneration officials and local stakeholders consulted. The paper looks at the impact of urban regeneration on urban sustainability by examining whether interventions under the Housing Market Renewal Programme have helped urban areas and communities to become more sustainable. It also discusses impacts at local level, by probing into some of Housing Market Renewal's grounded ‘sustainability stories’ and looking at how change is perceived by local residents. Furthermore, it re-opens a window into the Housing Market Renewal Programme and documents the three neighbourhoods within the wider context of scale and intervention across the whole programme.     

Planning the Climate-just City

Issues of urban equity have long been linked to urban planning. Yet in practice the quest for the ‘just city’, defined in terms of democracy, diversity, difference and sustainability, has proven to be highly problematic. Drawing on examples from the Australian urban context, we argue that the imperative of climate change adds urgency to the longstanding equity agenda of planning in cities. In our normative quest for the climate-just city we offer a conceptual and analytical framework for integrating the principles of climate justice and equity into urban planning thinking and practice.     

Building urban resilience with nature-based solutions: How can urban planning contribute?

Cities face increasing environmental, social and economic challenges that together threaten the resilience of urban areas and the residents who live and work there. These challenges include chronic stresses and acute shocks, amplified by climate change impacts. Nature-based solutions have emerged as a concept for integrating ecosystem-based approaches to address a range of societal challenges. Nature-based solutions directly address and contribute to increased urban resilience. However, implementing nature-based solutions is inherently complex, given the range of ecosystem services, their multi-functionality and the trade-offs between functions, and across temporal and spatial scales. Urban planning can play a substantial role to support the implementation of nature-based solutions and to manage trade-offs and conflicts, as well as how social equity dimensions are considered. This paper presents a framework that guides the application of urban planning to nature-based solutions’ implementation, by addressing key trade-offs across temporal, spatial, functional and social equity aspects. The framework highlights the key questions, and the supporting information required to address these questions, to underpin the inclusion of nature-based solutions for urban resilience. We find that while urban planning can contribute substantially, there are continuing gaps in how the inherently anthropocentric urban planning processes can give voice to non-human nature.     

Urban flood disaster management

Disaster management for urban areas is a growing priority owing to factors such as the relentless migration to cities, unplanned development, changing climate, and increasing operational and maintenance costs. New information and communication technologies offer improved opportunities to address these factors. This paper presents and describes the digital city concept as a means of capturing, analysing and applying (digital) information about the city area, its services, and their design and operation. In particular, the functionality of the digital city can be adapted for managing urban flood disasters. The paper highlights the need to manage the urban stormwater cycle integrated with urban planning. Urban flooding should be mitigated by having a judicious mix of both structural and nonstructural strategies, which are selected with the full participation of all stakeholders. The management of urban flooding is illustrated with application to the tropical island of St Maarten.     

The history of urban growth management in South Africa: tracking the origin and current status of urban edge policies in three metropolitan municipalities

ABSTRACT

For many cities in the Global South, colonialism played a dominant role in shaping their urban form. The historical objective of planning in colonial mother-cities was dealing with poor health and living conditions, therefore a planning approach similar to that followed in post-war Britain would appear beneficial in post-colonial cities, characterized by environmental and physical infrastructure unable to cope with massive population growth. Urban growth management is a discourse born in an attempt to control the growing industrial city in the early twentieth century, and in recent years applied through instruments such as urban edges or growth boundaries to limit urban sprawl and encourage higher density urban development. In South Africa, the principles of compaction and urban growth management formed part of the post-apartheid planning agenda towards transforming the inefficient and fragmented landscape inherited from separate spatial development. Consequently, urban edges and urban growth boundaries formed key components of municipal spatial planning frameworks since the early 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin and status of urban edges in three metropolitan municipalities in South Africa to aid in understanding of these spatial instruments in the south.