The social poetics of urban design: rethinking urban design through Louis Kahn’s vision for Central Philadelphia (1939–1962)

The architect Louis Kahn is known for the simple yet poetic composition of his words. Through some of the unique features of his unbuilt master plan for the urban centre in Central Philadelphia, this paper argues that we can understand the true quality of Kahn’s design only when we look at his proposals through the lens of linguistics and semiotics. The appeal of Kahn’s design lies in what semioticists and linguists would call ‘poetic quality’, or the production of inventive understandings of both the conventions and new inventions of the shared social milieu. It is precisely because the poetic function in language is humanistic, that Kahn’s use of social poetics has brought the abstract ideas of urban planners down to earth in a way that everyone can appreciate.     

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.     

Outcomes for ‘stayers’ in urban regeneration areas: the New Deal for Communities Programme in England

The 1998–2011 New Deal for Communities Programme was designed to change 39 deprived English areas, with regard to place- and people-based outcomes. A key mechanism for identifying change was a biennial household survey undertaken in both NDC and comparator areas. Because this survey involved revisiting those interviewed previously, longitudinal panels have been created for those staying within NDC, or comparator, areas. This paper analyses these data to reveal that people living in NDC areas saw little more in the way of positive change than their counterparts living in comparator areas. This finding raises questions about the ability of regeneration schemes to instigate net additional positive change.     

Transfer of urban ideas: The emergence of Venezuelan urbanism in the proposals for 1930s’ Caracas

This article focuses on the emergence of Venezuela's modern urbanism through the proposals for 1930s’ Caracas. In an effort to combine the different discourses which underpinned the urban discipline, both technical and legal literature are reviewed. As a way of illustrating how urbanistic ideas travelled from Europe to Latin America until the early decades of this century, the article stresses the professional background of the French urbanists called to design the 1939 ‘Plan Monumental’ of Caracas. The role of the local administration in assembling the different strands which had shaped Venezuelan urbanism since the late 19th century is highlighted.     

European urban culture,Javier de Mesones-Cabello’s planning practice and its legacy in city of Valladolid

Javier de Mesones-Cabello was an influential and active planner of the 1960s and 1970s in Spain, who passed away in December, 2016. His professional career as a self-taught urban planner was extensively linked to his academic and institutional activities. These connections supported the establishment of relationships with prestigious professionals working in urban planning practice. In planning the 1969 masterplan for the city of Valladolid, in Spain, de Mesones-Cabello made several intellectual references to the Greek urban planner Doxiadis. This masterplan covers a relatively unknown example of directional city growth in a European context. My findings elucidate the extent to which de Mesones-Cabello was influenced by Doxiadis, and the circumstances in which these ideas have continued to dominate thinking about Valladolid's urban development.     

The Royal Fine Art Commission and 75 years of English design review: the first 60 years, 1924–1984

This paper is the first of two linked papers that focus on the work of the Royal Fine Art Commission (RFAC), which, for three quarters of a century, held the mantel of the UK Government’s advisor on design in the built environment for England and Wales. The paper draws on archival and documentary evidence to explore the important work and concerns of the RFAC from its creation in 1924 and its early years, through to the post-war construction boom and into the 1980s and a new less paternalistic era of government. Analysis of the archives is supplemented by what the limited available literature tells us about the RFAC. As the instigator of a national design review service covering England and Wales, the work of the RFAC forms an important context for understanding more recent approaches to design review, both in the UK and internationally, that today form a critical component of contemporary planning practices.     

The Royal Fine Art Commission and 75 years of English design review: the final 15 years, 1984–1999

This paper is the second of two linked papers that focus on the work of the Royal Fine Art Commission (RFAC), which for three quarters of a century held the mantel of the UK Government’s advisor on design in the built environment. This paper tells the story of the organization’s final 15 years when, under a new and charismatic leader, the Commission substantially changed its modus operandi, and came out of the shadows, although without ever fully embracing the modern era of government. Analysis of the archives are supplemented by what the limited available literature tells us about the RFAC and by a small number of interviews with key stakeholders with first-hand experience of the operation of the RFAC; those who either worked for it, were responsible for it within Government, or were reviewed by it. The experience offers valuable insights into the practices and problematics of design governance that today, internationally, forms one of the keystones of modern day planning.     

Complexity in urban agriculture: the role of landscape typologies in promoting urban agriculture’s growth

This research identifies the potential shortcomings of local initiatives to encourage urban agriculture projects by comparing citywide efforts with existing community projects. It investigates how more effectual policy might be developed to accommodate a fuller range of urban agriculture projects, and how urban agriculture stakeholders might use clearer promotion processes to meet stated goals. It hypothesizes the important role of clear urban agriculture definitions, typologies, and links to associated benefits towards meeting the stated goals of policy-makers. Utilizing San Francisco in California as a case study, this paper investigates recent efforts at citywide urban agriculture promotion.     

The suburban perimeter blocks of Madrid 10 years on: how residents’ level of satisfaction relates to urban design qualities

ABSTRACT

In the 1990s, the suburbs of Madrid saw the substantial development of new housing. New plans provided for 200,000 new homes over 7200?Ha of land. These developments eschewed earlier modernist forms of suburbanization in favour of the perimeter block that superficially echoed the ‘traditional’ built form of the city. But the new perimeter blocks and neighbourhood design varied from their inner-city counterparts and have been the subject of near universal criticism. Some 10 years after their occupation, we reappraise the development importantly adding the perspective of residents. While many of the design failings identified in the past are confirmed, we also reveal qualities that residents value. The study demonstrates the value of post hoc evaluation after residents have settled in and leads us to argue for the importance of better integrating the everyday life (lived experience) perspective into evaluations to achieve better places.     

Shaping Seoul’s memories: the co-evolution of memorials,national identity,democracy and urban space in South Korea’s capital city

This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the diverse memorials erected in Seoul since 1953. It explores how these memorials have expressed shifts in national identity towards democracy since the end of dictatorship in 1987. It illustrates how commemorative intentions in this massive, rapidly-changing metropolis have intersected with other urban design aims and pressures. The analysis reveals an evolutionary progression in memorial themes, from heroic statues that re-establish roots of Korean national identity and independence, to marginal grassroots memorials and wider themed precincts that present more inclusive, democratic, complex narratives of identity and history.     

Transnational urban spaces and urban environmental reforms: analyzing Beijing’s environmental restructuring in the light of globalization

In this era of globalization, ‘transnational spaces’ are being created within urban settings, providing a direct connection between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. Corporate headquarters, hotels, shopping malls, and airports are typical examples of such spaces, which while located within an urban territory, are often conceived by foreign designers, developers, and manufacturers, as well as maintained by multinational companies and banks. Such local–global interconnection is giving urban management a new shape, as urban management practices are now frequently intertwining with global construction and property management approaches. This paper argues that, at the same time, a set of new mechanisms that may help to tackle problems related to the urban environment and infrastructure is unfolding. Starting with a conceptual discussion of the role of globalization in urban environmental restructuring, this paper subsequently explores the context of Beijing and the environmental management possibilities introduced in this city by global actors (through the examples of World Tower, IBM Tower, and ABN AMRO and ING head offices). Beijing, due to China’s recent economic opening process, provides an intriguing backcloth to demonstrate how transnational urban spaces—standing in-between the local and the global—may canalize environmental innovations from the ‘global’, putting globalization at work for a better urban environment.     

‘Model for a short-lived future’? Early tribulations of the Barbican redevelopment in the City of London, 1940–1982

This article recounts the chequered history of the Barbican redevelopment in the City of London, exploring its origins, planning, and implementation, together with its changing reputation. The Barbican is an interesting example of a modernist housing scheme, comprising multi-storey flats and social facilities set within a pedestrian precinct, something relatively unusual in the British context. The scheme was originally conceived in the 1950s as a publicly funded alternative to the rapid expansion of private office development and was pushed through in the 1960s by the City Corporation acting as its own developer. Subsequently, the whole project became mired in controversy and technical difficulties, and, as a result, on completion, few viewed it favourably. However, with urban regeneration again on the political agenda since the 1990s, the Barbican's image has improved, and it is increasingly recognized as one of the more notable achievements of British post-war modernism.     

The making and remaking of Hackney Wick, 1870–2014: from urban edgeland to Olympic fringe†

This paper is concerned with issues of urban change in areas of London that have become the focus of regeneration strategies predicated on accommodating growth and development within existing city boundaries. Its focus is in the Lower Lea Valley in East London, which developed in the nineteenth century in the context of its peripheral location with respect to central London and which continues to lie at the seam between urban authorities. Today, this whole area is subject to regeneration plans based on addressing the physical and social manifestations of this transforming peripherality – including environmental impacts of industrialization, post-industrial piecemeal development, spatial disconnection, and long-standing patterns of social deprivation – by creating a framework geared towards attracting new investment, population and employment and, in the process, addressing the impediments to change that are seen to have been posed by fractured local policy. Taking one small part of this larger area, Hackney Wick, which is beside the 2012 London Olympic site in the London Borough of Hackney, the paper turns to planning history to explore its development from the nineteenth century in relation to urban boundaries. It uses this exploration as the basis for reflecting on the significance of contemporary boundary adjustments and plans predicated on facilitating the creation of local centrality for the remaking of an urban ‘edgeland’.     

Living condition among China’s rural–urban migrants: recent dynamics and the inland–coastal differential

Using data from the Rural–Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) survey, this paper evaluates the very recent dynamics of living condition among China’s rural–urban migrants during 2008–2014, scrutinizing in particular the differential between the inland region and the coastal region. Along with their improved economic conditions, housing conditions of migrants have in general improved, although compared to urban locals their disadvantages persist over time. The improvement is especially fast among those migrants residing in the inland region. Multivariate regression results indicate that education, income, place of origin and family composition are important determinants of migrants’ housing conditions. Finally, decomposition analysis suggests that even after controlling for those observable factors, there is still a large inland–coastal differential. Over time, China’s rural–urban migrants are becoming more stable and settled in host cities. The temporary nature of China’s migrants, claimed in many previous studies, might be changing. Updated and regional-specific migrant policies are needed.     

Technologies of Mobilising Consensus: The Politics of Producing Affordable Housing Plans for the London Legacy Development Corporation’s Planning Boundary

Powerful arguments have emerged that English planning is currently characterised by technologies of governing that generate consensus over top-down neoliberal plans. For post-politics scholars, this dynamic has been conceptualised as post-politics. Using the case of affordable housing planning within the London Legacy Development Corporation, I explore these two perspectives. I find that affordable housing planning within the London Legacy Development Corporation has indeed been shaped by techniques of governing which aim to generate consensus over this Corporation’s affordable housing plans. However, drawing from a power-based understanding of politics, I argue that these efforts represent political techniques of governing.     

Around Madrid: the continuing influence of historical urban development plans on today’s periphery

This paper describes the peripheral development that has occurred in Madrid over the last 16 years (2000–2016), a period split by the economic crash that occurred in 2008. The paper argues that the relationship between economic development and infrastructure corridors witnessed in this peripheral development is intrinsically connected to the nineteenth and twentieth-century plans for urban growth. While these corridors have some similarities to the Strip model for an automobile city discussed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown in their seminal book Learning from Las Vegas, the Madrid peripheries enjoy a long genealogy that complicates any easy link to the Strip, particularly around issues of economic speculation, typology and image-making or imagining, which will be introduced using the work of Michael Neuman and others. The research design adopted examines the treatment of the periphery in a number of historical plans, particularly their attitudes towards infrastructure and economic development, in order to establish connections between those historical plans and the city’s planned and (partially) realized peripheral development today.     

Topographies of the future: urban and suburban visions in Edward Bellamy’s utopian fiction

In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti-urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.     

‘London particular’: the city,its atmosphere and the visibility of its objects

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the smoke-filled atmospheres of London and other industrial cities were the subject of aesthetic, scientific and legal inquiry. Reconstructing the conjunction of such inquiries in a pivotal architectural episode—the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament—reveals an important transformation in the understanding of the relationship between a city and its architectural objects. Where it once seemed possible to regard these objects (and their architects) as independent, discrete participants in the larger material and administrative domains of the city, the expanding knowledge and judgements of the atmosphere and its effects produced an entirely different perception. The city and its architectural objects were co-extensive, involuntary participants in an encompassing process of change registered by two newly recognised categories: decay and maintenance.     

Can we ‘Catch ‘em All’? An exploration of the nexus between augmented reality games,urban planning and urban design

Urban planners and designers have spent the last 50 years trying to activate unused public spaces, create walkable cities and encourage sociability through urban design. Pokémon Go has succeeded, almost overnight, to entice people of all demographics into the streets of cities around the world. In fact, many previously underutilized public spaces have suddenly become hot spots for all demographics, playing Pokémon Go and other similar augmented reality games (ARGs). While anecdotally it seems that ARGs activate public spaces, increase community interactions and facilitate exploration of urban spaces, little study has been done on the influence of ARGs on sense of place, or the way in which these games are influencing player engagement with the public spaces they are playing within. This paper reports the findings of a survey of 994 Australian players. The paper explores whether ARGs affect user needs being met in public spaces, and the implications of these findings for urban practitioners.