Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favourite Food

Environmental compensation is used worldwide, but remains a concept under development in many countries. The underlying idea is to maintain the overall quality of the environment in cases where environmental assets are damaged, for example, by residential or industrial development or by road construction. This study aimed to investigate how environmental compensation is perceived in a number of scientific fields and what the differences, if any, are between those fields. The results showed that the respondents took a positive view of environmental compensation in general, of the inclusion of social aspects and of the role of NGOs, but that they also (implicitly) questioned the mitigation hierarchy. The study also revealed several differences between the scientific disciplines, though mainly in the differing strengths of the groups’ convictions.     

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.     

Benefits arising from sustainable use of North America’s fishery resources: economic and conservation impacts of recreational angling

Fish are one of North America’s most valuable renewable resources. Although recreational anglers harvest a portion of their catch, modern recreational fisheries are based on the principle of sustainable use, and most are highly regulated using the best available science, fisheries data and risk assessments. Recent surveys indicate that approximately 10–20% of the North American population participates in angling, and the resulting economic impact is greater than that from commercial fishing and aquaculture; it even exceeds the combined annual revenue from several of the top major league sports in North America. The relationship between man and certain fish species that arises through activities such as recreational angling is an important driver of the science on aquatic species and their ecosystems. There are many other ways that recreational anglers contribute to conservation, with benefits for sportfish and non-sportfish species alike, as well as for North America’s aquatic ecosystems.     

Hans Scharoun’s ‘Dwelling Cells’ and the autonomy of architecture

This article traces a genealogy of three Berlin housing projects: Hans Scharoun’s housing estate Charlottenburg Nord (1956–1961); the Siedlung Siemensstadt (1929–1931), planned with Martin Wagner; the pre-modern reform block of Nonnendamm, designed by Johnson and Josef Feldhuber (1910–1912). Whilst for Scharoun the inversion of the figure of the perimeter block of Nonnendamm through the Zeilenbau organisation of Siemensstadt exemplifies modernism’s radical break from the past, it is the variegated form or Gestalt of Charlottenburg Nord that verifies the essential nature of a dwelling cell, or neighbourhood.

By contrast, this paper argues that Scharoun’s dwelling cell is the result of a continuous trajectory of typological reasoning. Each of the key spatial components of Nonnendamm—the figure of the block, the façade, the ground and the void—are taken up, hyper-articulated and re-configured, all in the service of the coherence and differentiation of a segment of the urban population. This trajectory exemplifies how modern architecture’s impetus for experimentation is taken into the service of and propels the broader reflection across disciplines regarding how to house and group the urban population.     

Exeter and the question of Thomas Sharp’s physical legacy

Whilst Thomas Sharp’s intellectual role as a pioneer in the history of town planning thought is difficult to dispute, the physical legacy of Sharp’s work as a planner is more problematic. This is partly because Sharp’s plans for specific plans were only partially implemented in the febrile context of British reconstruction planning in the 1940s, but it also reflects the fact that although aspects of design were set out, the physical implementation of Sharp’s plans was largely left to others. Nevertheless, the issue of Sharp’s physical legacy opens up questions about what might be expected from Sharp’s planning practice, as well as judgements about the durability of those aspects of Sharp’s plans that were implemented. In this paper, we explore issues relating to Sharp’s physical legacy through a case study of the past, present and future of post‐war development in Exeter, focusing especially on the Princesshay area, often cited as one of the most coherent expressions of Sharp’s plan.     

Landscape and the cultural politics of China’s anticipatory urbanism

China has seen a proliferation of monumental urban projects in recent years extending to lower tier cities. This paper examines the production of new urban landscapes in the Kangbashi New District of Ordos Municipality to assess the political economy and cultural logics of China’s current-day city-making programmes. The concept of ‘anticipatory urbanism’ is developed to interpret how monumentality in the built environment is aimed at foretelling new developmental futures promising to deliver power to the local state and prosperity to residents. The analysis assesses public responses to landscape transformations and discusses how speculation in the production of new city spaces generates conflict and crisis for the local state. Anticipatory urbanism is found to feed off government ambition and undermines sustainable urban growth.     

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.     

Innovative potential for development of Europe’s neighbouring countries and regions

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is intended to promote development in bordering states and regions positioned along a broad arc from Morocco to Ukraine to become more friendly, stable, and prosperous. The policy offers limited but attractive terms of association with selected non-EU members concerning trade, mobility, innovation, and assistance in exchange for the adoption of important Western features that comprise the Community Acquis. The theme of this special issue hews closely to the economic development goals of the ENP by examining forces and factors that underlie the ability of neighbouring regions and countries to acquire and exploit innovative technologies, which are seen as the key element of a successful ENP.     

Courtyard in conflict: the transformation of Beijing’s Siheyuan during revolution and gentrification

After Liang Sicheng’s effort to preserve ‘Old Beijing’ failed, vast areas of traditional hutong neighbourhoods were cleared to make way for socialist monuments and work-units. From the 1950s onwards collectivisation that forced siheyuan dwellers to share their homes with ‘comrade tenants’, especially after the Cultural Revolution when courtyard owners were persecuted, remaining siheyuan houses had been dirty and crowded, known as dazayuan, mostly occupied by working-class families, until recently, when the ‘socialist market economy’ rendered such neglected residences profitable. Wealthy property developers evicted the local population, often not without forced relocation and government cooperation, and refurbished these courtyard houses as ‘new siheyuan’ for sale to the emerging business elites and celebrities.

This article explores the transformations of Beijing’s siheyuan against the turbulent history of China since the mid-twentieth century. It illustrates the ways in which architecture was reconfigured to channel and contribute to the broader social and ideological missions of the CCP. Whilst the construction of monuments propagated a positive image of the regime through grand ceremonial events, the tragic experiences of the courtyards’ inhabitants during both revolution and gentrification embodied the penetrating depth and far-reaching consequence of the Party’s social and ideological engagement in the daily life of the common people. The former operates on the symbolic level with landmarks, satisfying growing nationalism with the promise of a powerful country of which to be proud, and the latter on the practical level with day-to-day dwellings, first accommodating the urban proletarians as a product of the revolution then satisfying the emerging commercial elites in a society of growing capitalism. The control of domestic space became an important part of Chinese governance, for which the reshaping of people’s lives through architecture served as a crucial measure to legitimate the regime in ideology and to provide support for its changing political agenda.     

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.     

Virtual enclosure,ecosystem services,landscape’s character and the ‘rewilding’ of the commons: the ‘Lake District’ case

Abstract

It is paradoxical that, while there is a generally increasing recognition of the scientific and cultural importance of conserving ‘semi-natural’ pastoral environments, and the negative effects of their widespread abandonment and overgrowth, British ‘rewilding’ activists and environmental managers are effectively advocating policies that will have a similar negative effect on the character of the semi-natural pastoral commons of places like England’s iconic Lake District. This situation, it will be argued, owes to the mindset of ‘virtual enclosure’ whereby the character of landscape is pre-defined by an assumed, behind-the-scenes, Euclidean/Ptolemaic spatial logic that leads to the comprehension of nature as a bounded scenic property; an (e)state of nature with its own economic system and services. This mindset is antithetical to both the practice of pastoral commoning and much contemporary natural science and conservation policy. It fits well, however, with older teleological ideas of nature, as well as modern ideas of privatisation, private property and management control.     

Growth and degradation in the Orient’s ‘Las Vegas’: issues of environment in Macau

This paper argues that the rapid growth of gambling‐related tourism and urban construction in Macau has given rise to serious environmental degradation. The major environmental issues include air quality, water supply, solid waste disposal, noise prevention, heritage conservation and environmental management. The author suggests that the government in Macau should refocus this city’s development direction and commit itself to sustainable development. At the policy‐making level, there are such urgent issues as integration of environmental, economic and urban planning with community participation in decision‐making; enhancement of environmental legislation and institutions; implementing vital measures to control of the numbers of visitors; developing a mass transport system; and protecting the city’s cultural heritage.