Housing needs and planning policies for the Asian city — the lesson from Hong Kong

Of all the Asian Cities, Hong Kong appears to be coping most successfully with its housing problems and is constantly cited as an example to be followed. However, the impressive statistics relate only to the squatter section of the population and the extensive tenement slums have been virtually ignored. Policies towards these areas are currently being formulated, but extensive research is needed to ensure effective legislation. At present a large gap exists between official plans for the future and the desires of Hong Kong's half‐million slum dwellers. Even if a successful policy is adopted, it would be unwise to assume this could form a blue‐print for other cities in the region. Hong Kong is a City‐State with no rural hinterland to hold back its economic progress; there are lessons to be learnt from observations of Hong Kong's efforts in the housing sphere, but these must be carefully selected and should materialize in terms of administrative machinery rather than specific goals.     

On urban sprawl: Closed city,open city or does it even matter?

The empirical urban sprawl literature uses the closed city urban model in which population and income are exogenous. This paper considers the open city model with endogenous population and income as an alternative. The tests for single-county urbanized areas over 1970–2010 support the open over closed city models. While point estimates differ for open city instrumental variable (IV) models when compared with closed city OLS counterparts, the open city models offer broad empirical support for the underlying neoclassical urban land use theory. In that regard, support for the theory found in the existing empirical literature using closed city models is not likely to diminish when using empirically preferred open city models.     

Knowledge-based land use and transport planning? Consistency and gap between “state-of-the-art” knowledge and knowledge claims in planning documents in three Scandinavian city regions

The central concern of this paper is the relationship between research-driven “state-of-the-art” knowledge, and knowledge claims made in practice, in planning for sustainability. The paper approaches this topic from a critical realist perspective, which is used to provide criteria for positing “state-of-the-art” knowledge validity, and assessing the quality of situated knowledge claims in planning practice. In this way the paper contributes to debates about an ontological turn in planning knowledge. By reviewing key planning documents in three Scandinavian city regions, the paper shows that the knowledge claims about travel behavioral impacts of proposed land use and transport infrastructure presented in the documents are, to varying extents, in accordance with “state-of-the-art” academic knowledge on these topics. Some long-standing “planning myths” are encountered in the investigated planning documents. In one of the cities, residential and workplace location close to suburban public transport stops is highlighted as a traffic-reducing measure, rather than proximity to inner-city concentrations of jobs and other facilities, and density is discussed at a neighborhood scale rather than at a city scale. In all three cities, planning documents depict road capacity increases as having no traffic-generating effect. These latter claims are used in support of more decentralized land-use patterns and considerable road development. Since the likelihood of achieving sustainability goals relies heavily on whether the measures chosen are productive or counter-productive, knowledge obviously matters. A stronger focus on how well suited proposed strategies for spatial development are to produce their purported outcomes should be welcomed in planning research and practice.     

Extension planning and the historic city: civic design strategies in the 1908–9 Copenhagen international competition

In shedding light on the 1908–9 competition for Greater Copenhagen this article examines the contest as an instrument for the accumulation and transmission of planning know‐how, ideas and innovations in relation to the development of town planning theory and practice in the Nordic Countries. Plans are considered as both technical and cultural graphics marks reflecting alternative and possibly contradictory images of the greater city or city of the future. The discussion focuses on the relationship between urban design's twin polarities: urban transformation and creation on the one hand; concern for conservation and urban continuity on the other. After considering the competition's international dimension, the article explores the civic art strand of design in northern Europe before 1914 and the idea of the historic city by investigating the conservation movement that flourished in Copenhagen when there were rapid changes in the physical fabric. The article, based on archive materials, analyses of awarded and non‐awarded entries alike, illustrates how architects, engineers and surveyors combined their design of the city's extensions with conservation schemes for both peripheries and centre. It is suggested that, at a time when Nordic municipal authorities were pressing for comprehensive town planning, planners strove to provide ways of protecting the existing built environment. This involved not only safeguarding an emerging ‘historic city’ in contrast to the new extensions, but also proposals for maintaining urban continuity in the peripheries.     

City planning exhibitions in Germany, 1910–2010

This paper promotes the extraordinary events scheduled to be held in 2010 under the auspices of ‘RUHR 2010 Kulturhauptstadt Europas’ (‘The Ruhr: cultural capital of Europe’). The award of the accolade, ‘capital of culture’, to the Ruhr is unique, as a whole region has never before been honoured in this way. The Ruhr region contains 53 cities and towns, and 2500 events will take place in conjunction with this celebration, collectively named: ‘Wandel durch Kultur – Kultur durch Wandel’ (‘Change through Culture, Culture through Change’). These represent the climax of a series of cultural events held across the region from 2000 in support of efforts to regenerate the Ruhr, and they amount to a celebration of how planning, people and place have been addressed together in a new way. Full information about these events can be found at www.ruhr2010.de/veranstaltungen     

What price planning? Reimagining planning as “market maker”

Planning has been widely vilified for the role it plays in disrupting the development process, hindering economic growth and creating the conditions for undersupply in housing markets, characterised by unaffordability. In this paper we hope to show that the analyses that support this view of planning are incomplete because of the theoretical limitations of the neoclassical tradition from which they emerge. By way of alternative we posit an account of planning that draws upon game theory and behavioural economics to explore those aspects of the activity that serve to animate the development process. This interpretation of planning as a “market maker” is explored through empirical case study research from three continental European contexts where planning is charged with playing an economically active role to control liquidity.     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda,Melbourne

Are planners ‘dealmakers’ caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of ‘democratic planning’ where planners question what is ‘legitimate’ and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co‐opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term ‘community consultation’, if democratic planning is to be achieved.     

Upward or outward? Politics, planning and council flats, 1919-1939

High-rise housing — although now generally seen as a post-1945 disaster — was built up to 14 storeys high in late Victorian London, before being severely restrained by the London Building Acts of the 1890s. Between the wars the issue of flats versus cottages for social housing became highly politicised, with Labour taking a consistently strong stand against multi-storey solutions until the party won control of the London County Council (LCC) in 1934 and, with it, responsibility for delivering the capital's slum clearance and re-housing programme. This paper tracks the course of the high-building debates during the inter-war years. It argues that the adoption of a flat-building policy after 1934 by the Labour-controlled LCC should be seen as a critical turning point, stimulating changes in the design and image of the working-class flat, encouraging a number of pro-flat initiatives, and smoothing the path for the adoption of very much higher social housing proposals after 1945.     

The birth of ‘land use planning’ in American urban planning

Although the concept of ‘land use planning’ is now firmly enmeshed in American urban planning, its meaning still remains vague. This paper aims to clarify the meaning by examining the historical development of land use planning in the USA. At the beginning of the twentieth century, city planners viewed a city as an organic unit of public facilities. While city planning thereafter provided potential elements of land use planning, such as zoning, zoning surveys and land use classification systems, the idea of land use planning itself was actually derived from rural county planning and was initially utilized in urban county planning as a guide for zoning in the 1930s. After bringing about a change in the way cities were viewed, that is, as a pattern of land use and population density, land use planning was further employed as a guide for urban redevelopment policies in the 1940s, and finally reaching full integration into city planning in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Prospects for the Compositions of City Planning System in China——Initiated from the development and puzzlement in modern western city planning

This essay is intended to draw up anoutline for the study of this subject,thougha big one,since the present development ofcity planning in China can provide the neces-     

Perspectives in planning history: planning and the dream of a better city in a global world – reflections on Helen Meller’s ‘Imagining Culture and the City in Planning History’

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Bombay City was rocked by a series of events that undermined the systems of rule patched together over the course of the preceding century and triggered a crisis of the colonial ‘information order’ on which these were based. Saliently, these developments led to significant changes in the modes of colonial urban governance, in which a new planning agency played a key role. Integral to this shift was a reappraisal, on the part of the colonial state, of its mechanisms of information gathering and the growing recognition of the need for more knowledge about the swiftly expanding city and its rapidly diversifying population. The census of 1901 reflected, to a large extent, these new imperatives of colonial governance.     

From urban to regional planning in Latin America, 1920–50

Focusing upon a period during which the planning discipline emerged and was consolidated in Latin America from the 1920s through the 1950s, this article aims to identify some of the impulses behind the widening of the scope of planning activities undertaken by planners of capital cities, from the local and urban to the regional and territorial. The author uses a comparative perspective to analyze this tendency toward the enlargement of the territorial extent of the plan, interpreting it as part of the process through which Latin America’s urban modernization proceeded while also relating it to the epistemological and professional shift from urbanismo towards planificación and planejamento. While factors such as the emergence of planning offices in some capital cities and the emergence of the first courses in planning in university curricula are considered, the article focuses mainly on the the approaches of pioneers in Latin American planning to this transition, in particular Carlos Contreras and Hannes Meyer in Mexico City, Carlos della Paolera in Buenos Aires, Karl Brunner in Bogotá and Santiago de Chile, and Maurice Rotival in Caracas.     

SMITHGROUP architecture engineering interiors planning

SmithGroup：形式源于目的 在英语中，smith是“匠心”的意思。此意义尤其适合美国设计公司SmithGroup，它多年来承接了大量技术与功能要求十分复杂的项目，并设计出了富有意义的建筑。就像手工艺人名字的意义样，SmithGroup在工作中充分表现出设计的技巧与意图，使它的建筑为人们提供种场所感与归属感。     

The Volta River Project: planning,housing and resettlement in Ghana, 1950–1965

This paper investigates the housing schemes proposed in connection with the Volta River Project, Ghana, in the mid-1950s to early 1960s. The Volta River Project formed part of Kwame Nkrumah’s vision for Ghana’s modernisation and industrialisation in the wake of political independence. Three associated worker housing schemes demonstrated somewhat contradictory design and construction methods, from high specification, extensive amenities, and comprehensive servicing, through to self-build ‘core’ houses amounting to little more than single-room dwellings. The paper traces the complex and controversial history of these schemes, supplemented with findings of several field trips to the settlements in question, to unravel the value of the ‘Core Houses’ approach. The most successful project to incorporate indigenous agency and true collaboration was the semi-formal ‘Combined Area’ housing at Akosombo, a positive model for shared agency and collaboration in planning, housing, and facilities delivery. Sitting alongside the carefully manicured plan of Akosombo, with its regulated market, excellent health care and desire to set high standards of cleanliness, the Combined Area has not only provided homes for the lower-paid and labouring workers of the town, but has developed over time into a settlement where professionals and retired government workers are also now residing, not out of necessity but by choice. By actively developing their own homes, shared spaces and amenities there has developed a strong sense of ownership, community, and identity. The success and level of attachment to this settlement clearly extends beyond its material presence and through the shared experience of helping to cultivate a place of one’s own.     

Triggering factors of landslides in Campos do Jordão city,Brazil

This paper focuses on the identification and analysis of the mechanisms and triggering factors of some landslides which have occurred in Campos de Jordão city, Brazil. The methodological procedures were based mainly on the recognition of the weathering profiles, recording of the landslide features, elaboration of the map of unconsolidated materials and slope and mass flow direction charts. In addition, an analysis of the rainfall data of the last 23 years was carried out. The translational type was the most common landslide that occurred, with failure surfaces between the sandy silt and sandy clay layers. Most landslides occurred in areas with slopes steeper than 30°. The rainfall data analyzed also showed that the distribution is a more important triggering factor than the amount of precipitation, such that landslides occur preferentially in the period from December to January.     

Memory,narrative and display – city museums in recent initiatives and debates

Currently, the study and the exhibition of the history and artistic traces of city development are gaining new interest. Several Italian and European cities are proposing, or have just established, organisations or museums intended to ‘display’ their past. Recently a research group has been constitued at the University IUAV of Venice based on the premiss that a contemporary City Museum has to be a conduit for knowledge to a large and varied public including, on equal terms: citizens, immigrants, tourists and people with cultural and professional interests in the urban environment. In this sense Venice seems to be a very good clase‐study. While an important initiative, such as the constitution of a new Museum of the twentieth century in Mestre (the mainland of Venice) is going on, the research group thinks that this kind of institution, within the framework of a very complex and rich system of museums, such as the Venetian one, could have a wide remit. In fact, one of the special key issues for Venice in the twentieth century has been opening up its cultural and productive activities to the external world. Foreigner visitors, as well as many citizens have always had the vision of Venice as a medieval and renaissance city with a very old historical centre. Yet in the course of the twentieth century, the urban settlement had greatly changed in a very interesting and innovative way. This has to be explained and shown to both tourists and the Venetians.     

Liquefaction hazard mapping in the city of Boumerdès,Northern Algeria

The city of Boumerdès, located in Northern Algeria, was badly affected during the May 21, 2003 Zemmouri (Mw = 6.8) earthquake where extensive liquefaction has been reported. The aim of this paper is to assess and to map the liquefaction potential for Boumerdès. We collected and used data from 154 boreholes, 10 down-hole tests, 56 standard penetrations tests (SPT), and inventory of 35 water level points. This data has been analyzed in the framework of geographical information systems (GIS). We assessed the liquefaction potential index (LPI) by considering a seismic hazard scenario corresponding to a_max = 0.48 g calculated, using a probabilistic approach, for a return period of 500 years. LPI values have been correlated to compile the liquefaction hazard map that indicates the quantitative characteristics of the liquefiable layers and the induced disruption probability area. Results show that the main part of the city of Boumerdès belongs to a low liquefaction potential area except for a narrow corridor along the Corso waterway, where the liquefaction potential is moderate to high. The obtained results are compatible with the geological, geotechnical and hydrogeological susceptibility to liquefaction of the area. The results also show a good agreement with the observations made after the May 21, 2003 Zemmouri earthquake. The obtained liquefaction hazard maps may serve as useful tools for land management and planning in the city of Boumerdès and as an example of liquefaction hazard assessment that may be applied in other populated cities in northern Algeria’s seismic prone areas.