Reading cities: Developing an urban diagnostics approach for identifying integrated urban problems with application to the city of Birmingham,UK

For policymakers, planners, urban design practitioners and city service decision-makers who endeavour to create policies and take decisions to improve the function of cities, developing an understanding of cities, and the particular city in question, is important. However, in the ever-increasing field of urban measurement and analysis, the challenges cities face are frequently presumed: crime and fear of crime, social inequality, environmental degradation, economic deterioration and disjointed governance. Although it may be that many cities share similar problems, it is unwise to assume that cities share the same challenges, to the same degree or in the same combination. And yet, diagnosing the challenges a city faces is often overlooked in preference for improving the understanding of known challenges. To address this oversight, this study evidences the need to diagnose urban challenges, introduces a novel mixed-methods approach for doing so, applies (and critiques) the approach to the city of Birmingham, UK, and proposes a set of principles for the transferability of this new urban diagnostic methodology to other cities. The paper argues that applying a rigorous, explorative, diagnostic approach to ‘reading cities’ provides confidence that all critical challenges have been identified and, crucially, identifies how they are interdependent, both of which have implications for how policymakers and decision-makers address a particular city's combination of interlinked challenges.     

Digital neighborhoods

With the advent of ‘big data’ there is an increased interest in using social media to describe city dynamics. This paper employs geo-located social media data to identify ‘digital neighborhoods’ – those areas in the city where social media is used more often. Starting with geo-located Twitter and Foursquare data for the New York City region in 2014, we applied spatial clustering techniques to detect significant groupings or ‘neighborhoods’ where social media use is high or low. The results show that beyond the business districts, digital neighborhoods occur in communities undergoing shifting socio-demographics. Neighborhoods that are not digitally oriented tend to have higher proportion of minorities and lower incomes, highlighting a social–economic divide in how social media is used in the city. Understanding the differences in these neighborhoods can help city planners interested in generating economic development proposals, civic engagement strategies, and urban design ideas that target these areas.     

Perspectives on the 21st Century Urban University from Singapore – A viewpoint forum

In this Cities viewpoint forum, we argue that there is a need to rethink U.S./U.K.-centric approaches to the urban university in policy and practice. Gathering three critical commentaries by practitioners from within the Singaporean higher education system, the forum responds to the challenges of: (1) broadened expectation placed on higher education institutions; (2) the pressures and possibilities of global urbanization; and (3) the provocation to theorize the urban, and thus the urban university, from beyond the ‘Global North’. Following an introduction detailing the history and relevance of the Singaporean case, the three viewpoints seek to illustrate the various dimensions of university urbanism in the ‘Lion City’. Each address what the idea of being an urban university means, and how it is operationalized in Singapore. Key policy and conceptual insights illuminate a higher education regime negotiating the tensions between national developmentalist agendas and the opportunities opened by global urban connectivity. Significantly, and in contrast to current urban university paradigms, we find Singapore's university sector internalizing and operating with a particular technocratic urban ontology that, while partial, helps collapses the distinction between universities being ‘in’, ‘of’, or ‘for’ the city and opens new avenues to analyze and mobilize universities in urban(izing) society.     

区域设计视角下的山海型城市景观 体系方法范式研究

山海型城市是规划设计中常见的城市类型，在快速 城镇化过程中，其城市景观空间普遍面临高强度城市建设的严 峻挑战。当前国土空间治理背景下，如何在区域视角下结合数 字化城市设计技术方法，实现山海城格局整体保护，并彰显山 海特色城市景观，是中国山海型城市发展中的普适性问题。从 中国山海型城市的营城机制入手，梳理了山海型城市景观的共 性问题与挑战，并结合城市设计数字化技术提出“势-境-文貌”的山海型城市景观体系方法范式。最后以山东省威海市为 实践案例，提出山海型城市景观体系数字构建流程，并对区域 尺度下城市景观空间进行引导，以期提出具有普适性价值的山 海型城市景观体系方法。     

Claiming participation – a comparative analysis of DIY urbanism in Denmark

The article discuss the conflicts, potentials and possible alliances of do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism when it takes the form of spontaneous place appropriations, when it is performed as participatory urban design and when it is integrated strategically in planning. DIY urbanism and experimentation with participation are currently strong influential factors in Danish planning. The article explores the use of participatory DIY urban design in two cases: the relocation of beer drinkers in Enghave Square and the Carlsberg City development in Copenhagen, Denmark. Carlsberg City is the most thorough Danish example of how DIY urban design is employed as an investment and planning tool. It discusses the implications of DIY urbanism in terms of how it can be understood in the context of the struggles over ‘the right to the city’, how it applies different activist tactics for the appropriation of space, and how it is integrated in planning and the development logic.     

From Geddes’ city museum to Farrell’s urban room: past,present, and future at the Newcastle City Futures exhibition

ABSTRACT

Genuine engagement about how best to achieve liveable urban futures should be part of planning’s raison-d’etre but it has a chequered history of delivery. Exhibitions harnessing the communicative power of mixed media and linked to a progressive and responsive programme of focused discussion and debate remain relevant to community consultation and civic engagement. Terry Farrell’s concept of the ‘urban room’ to involve citizens in engaging with the past, present, and future of towns and cities offers a contemporary refreshment of the approach propounded by Patrick Geddes from the early 1900s. The possibilities of creating novel and compelling opportunities for civic discourse in this guise are explored in this review article though the Newcastle City Futures pop-up exhibition and events held in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 2014. This event carries lessons for imagining how planners, developers, governments, and community groups may come together to critically and creatively forge future propositions for the urban condition.     

City profile: Jaipur

Jaipur is the tenth largest metropolitan region in India, grown to be a popular tourist destination and a centre of business, commerce, and education. It has been the central focus of the state governments' visioning strategies by virtue of it being an urban heritage and the capital of state of Rajasthan, hence the efforts have been made to develop it into the ‘world-class’ city. After the inclusion of Jaipur City in the Smart City Program, the city is expected to undergo massive urban restructuring. This paper presents an outline of the history and planning of Jaipur, followed by an exploration of emerging urban and infrastructural challenges with a focus on management and governance.     

Land-use,transport and vehicle technology futures: An air pollution assessment of policy combinations for the Cambridge Sub-Region of the UK

This paper reports on an investigation of the impact on air-quality of combinations of urban form development scenarios and vehicle fleet technology changes. The scenarios combine policies affecting urban land-use plans within the Cambridge Sub-Region of the UK, alongside technological changes within the projected vehicle fleet. Broadly, the scenarios consist of the ‘Trend’ for urban form policy and vehicle technology and the urban form policy options of ‘Planned expansion’, ‘Market-led development’ and ‘Urban compaction’, each combined with form-appropriate technological scenarios addressing the uptake of current, and future, technologies in the vehicle fleet. The framework developed for environmental assessment is described, from land-use transport interaction, through traffic assignment and emissions modelling, through to dispersion calculations.The urban form-vehicle technology combinations have been assessed in terms of overall vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), greenhouse gas (CO₂) emissions, and local air quality (NO_x, NO₂, PM, HC). Results are presented for 2021 and show that overall network emissions change from −13% (Compaction) to +8% (Market-led) relative to the Trend, but effects on emissions in individual districts (NO_x) may much greater, −40% to +50%. Annual mean concentrations of NO₂ at the street level may vary by −7 to 8 μg/m³. The use of electric vehicles in the ‘Urban compaction’ scenario aids mitigation of air quality issues in the city centre. The results are discussed with respect to the feasibility of scenario implementation, current approaches to planning, and trends in vehicle technology. Limitations of the modelling framework are also identified, and future developments outlined.     

Towards evaluation design for smart city development

Smart city developments integrate digital, human and physical systems in the built environment. With growing urbanization and widespread developments, identifying suitable evaluation methodologies is important. Case-study research across five UK cities ? Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough ? revealed that city evaluation approaches were principally project-focused with city-level evaluation plans at early stages. Key challenges centred on selecting suitable evaluation methodologies to evidence urban value and outcomes, addressing city authority requirements. Recommendations for evaluation design draw on urban studies and measurement frameworks, capitalizing on big data opportunities and developing appropriate, valid, credible integrative approaches across projects, programmes and city-level developments.     

High-rise Dubai urban entrepreneurialism and the technology of symbolic power

Twenty-first century metropolises are often engaged in a rivalry for primacy in many different geographical scales. Dubai, a relatively new urban settlement, is not immune from such endeavor. The Emirate has undertaken an impressive urban revolution in a rather explicit attempt to become a novel New York.This viewpoint explores the present evolution of the city, illustrating how a centralized and hyper-entrepreneurial approach has characterized Dubai’s attempt to ascend in the ‘world urban hierarchy’ and establish itself as the image of the 21st century metropolis. Contrary to much of the eulogistic take that often features in city rankings, an analysis of this venture through the city’s contemporary urban restructuring unveils the problematic social effects of Dubai’s quest for “symbolic power” – that technique of ‘worldmaking’ that confers influence by constituting the given by stating and mediating it. The compulsive sprawl of ‘icons’ and ‘vertical cities’ associated with this practice might set the Emirate on a perilous course with disastrous social consequences. In this view, the article draws upon some of the most astonishing works-in-progress of this city – and the Burj Dubai in primis – to explain the complexity of this power, and the many contradictions that can arise with it as quickly as Dubai’s skyscrapers.     

Urban Voids: Grounds for Change Reimagining Philadelphia's Vacant Lands

Dispersal is most often regarded as an upshot of population rises as the demographic grows and spreads outwards of the city centre. Cities, though, can simultaneously experience contraction and expansion. Despite being the sixth largest city in the US, Philadelphia is a ‘shrinking city’; deindustrialistion has prompted urban abandonment at the same time as the growth of urban sprawl. Deenah Loeb, executive director of the City Parks Association of Philadelphia, describes how the URBAN VOIDS competition was launched in order to trigger public discussion and the reimagining of a greened city. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Democratic design experiments in urban planning – navigational practices and compositionist design

In the field of urban planning, public participation and inclusion of citizens have been practised and researched for many years. However, a focus on co-creative urban planning practices seems to have gained more focus over the last decade and calls for new urban planning practices, which allow experimentation and imagination, and at the same time take its outset in the existing networks in the city (such as visions, strategies, regulations and practices) when planning for the future. In this article, we investigate how a compositionist design programme can be translated into the practices of urban planners. We find that the notion of ‘democratic design experiments’ in many ways meet the demands of the increasingly complex field of urban planning and set out to explore how such a design programme can be applied in practice. We suggest ‘navigational practice’ as a way of describing how urban planners deal with ‘drawing things together’ in urban space and introduce ‘sensitivity’, ‘staging’ and ‘mobilization’ as interconnected elements of this practice. We exemplify the significance of these navigational practices by analysing two democratic design experiments in the area of urban waste management in Copenhagen. The article concludes that compositionist design is a powerful contribution to the framing of urban planning projects and that navigational practice can be a productive way of operationalising democratic design experiments in the urban context.     

Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall and the invention of the post-modern city

The Royal Concert Hall, designed by Leslie Martin, occupies a pivotal space in central Glasgow. Its opening in 1990 concluded a thirty-year war over modern and post-modern urban form. At the time, Glasgow's city centre looked very different than three decades earlier, and the changes from a modern to a ‘post-modern’ environment were paradigmatic for the shifts in many de-industrialising cities in Europe and North America. In this context the Royal Concert Hall is an example of how a single building catalysed a wide-ranging paradigm change.

This article retraces the design debates on the basis of newspaper articles, interviews and documents, in particular from the City Council and other public agencies. It will show that the struggle that eventually defined the shape and use of Glasgow's largest music venue as well as those of the entire city centre related to Glasgow's post-modern ‘reinvention’. At the same time it shows that the new urban form was not a mandatory consequence of the economic shift but conditioned by several social and cultural specificities.     

One city's ‘urban cosmography’

Illustrations of urban scenes naturally describe the physical characteristics of the places depicted. These representations also express implicitly broader beliefs which tie the spatial order of the surrounding world to local systems, institutions, and human actions. Images of a city embody, therefore, an ‘urban cosmography’, a concept inspired by early modern artisans' attempts to chart the contours of the world, both known and unknown. Seen from this perspective, historical graphics such as maps, posters, and birds-eye views document a city's position within a continually evolving universal order. This paper will review graphics drawn from the history of one city in particular: Baltimore, Maryland. Like other cities on the eastern seaboard of the US, Baltimore has been represented by diverse visual arts for more than two centuries. With the advent of digital and social media, Baltimore's development will depend even more upon the city's local and global interrelationships. ‘Urban cosmography’ is, therefore, a useful conceptual prism through which one may perceive the link between the city's historical legacy and contemporary urban challenges. One consequence is that visual tropes for traditional urban polarities – ‘growth’ versus ‘decay’, for instance – may be superseded by new symbols that incorporate both.     

Brazilian city planners,American city planning? New perspectives on urban planning in Rio de Janeiro, 1930–1945

This article analyses the connections between the ideas and principles of American city planning from 1920 with those articulated by Brazilian city planners in the 1930s and implemented by the administration of the City of Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil, notably during the period of the Estado Novo [The New State] from 1937 to 1945. In a period characterized by the centralization of political power and the concentration of decision‐making in the hands of the president and the state, the City of Rio de Janeiro undertook a series of restructuring projects which utilized new forms of administration and organization. This article explores the links between urban planning in Brazil and the USA that were a notable feature of these projects. It examines particular requirements set down in city plans, city planning commissions and funding for urban activities, such as ‘excess condemnation’, by focusing upon articles and books written by four Brazilian engineers and proposals put forward by the American City Planning Institute, detailed in the proceedings of the National Conference on City Planning, in the periodical, City Planning and works by affiliated authors.     

Maintaining an Arm's Length? Housing,Community Governance and the Management of ‘Problematic’ Populations

This paper examines how contemporary social problems of community care, anti-social behaviour, ethnic and racial tensions and the housing of sex offenders are conceptualised in UK housing and urban policy. It explores how and why the populations of social housing areas disproportionately bear the risks arising from these social problems, and how the responses of these populations are subsequently problematised. The redefining of social landlords' roles in managing ‘problematic’ populations is explored, and similarities in the responses to social problems in both private and social housing developments are identified, based around parochial ‘community’ forms of governance. The paper concludes that the increasing secession of local housing governance from a ‘public’ model of provision increases the ‘subsidiarity of responsibility’ upon deprived populations for managing social problems, reflecting a wider imbalance in the societal distribution of risks.     

人类感知尺度的城市图景——再读《城市意向》

凯文·林奇的《城市意向》在以现代派的理性设计观念为主流的设计潮流中,创造出一种新的城市思考方法。向人们集中阐述了一种在人类感知程度上理解城市形态的理论。将目光聚焦在环境感知和场所构建上,以此为前提讨论了城市设计感知尺度。城市设计尺度的价值重点在于人们和他们怎么样认识、评价城市环境,并怎么样从环境中提取意义以及怎么样把意义添加在环境上。文章通过对它的解读,提出两点对其意义的理解与商榷之处,希望能给我们在当前的城市分析提供有价值的途径。     

Conceptualizing ‘the Urban’ Through the Lens of Durban,South Africa

Contemporary urban theory raises many questions about how ‘the urban’ is being conceptualized in a fast changing world that is approaching an urban epoch. Evolving debates about what it means to be urban, including the similarities and differences between so-called northern and southern cities, the future of cities, the way to manage and sustain cities, and cities’ relationships to the new Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, reveal the need for urban theory that can explain and provide insights into contemporary urban governance, processes, and outcomes. This special issue uses Durban as a lens to provide insight into the changing nature of cities in the Global South and Africa in particular, which encapsulate and reflect both formality and informality; tradition and modernity; uneven and unequal growth and social transformation; environmental crises and ‘resilience and sustainability’. This paper reflects on the dominant processes shaping the development of the city, revealing the challenges, tensions, and opportunities that emerge as the city assembles new ways of being urban, through the rationalities, knowledge, experiences, practices and actions of the state, citizens, and the private sector.     

移动测量系统在芜湖市城管数字化项目中的应用

结合芜湖市城管数字化项目建设的具体实际,着重介绍了移动测量系统（MMS）数据采集的原理和数据处理的方法以及在芜湖市城管数字化系统中的应用情况。