Determinism,idealism and the politics of environmentalism—a view point

Over the past 15 years there have been ideological shifts in the ecologically‐based environmentalist movement. The earlier emphasis was on reactionary ideologies of neo‐Malthusianism and the lifeboat ethic, romantic anti‐urbanism and rural escapism. These were strongly underpinned by the notion of naturally‐imposed limits on human endeavour which sprang from a philosophy of environmental determinism. Now there is more emphasis upon human free will and less which is escapist, defensive and socially regressive. The green movement is increasingly compatible with socialism, but there is still a large ideological gap between “Green” and “Red” wings of the movement. Green Greens are idealistic, and mistakenly believe that they have discovered a new politics which are “above” the politics of class conflict. They call for a common unity and for spiritually‐inspired value changes, and erroneously think that their ecotopian vision is becoming a widespread reality. Green socialists, however, are more realistic because their analysis is materialist. They do not divorce social and environmental reform from the need to change the social‐economic mode of production, and therefore hold out a solution which is more genuinely revolutionary and has more relevance to the mass of people.     

The politics of ‘race’ and the transformation of the post-apartheid space economy

This paper provides an overview of the challenge of spatial reconfiguration facing South Africa. Set against a brief overview of the key aspects of the post apartheid urban policy milieu that, notwithstanding significant tensions within the ruling party, gave rise to a cabinet level policy commitment to a National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP). The paper reflects on three key themes. The first issue outlined in the paper is the massive demographic shift that is taking place that underpins the development challenge. In particular trends in the process of population growth, labour market change and urbanization are summarized. Second, given the dominance of Africans in urban spaces, the paper outlines how efforts to achieve racial integration have erroneously focused on rural over urban development. A distinction is drawn between traditionalist pro-African views that give preferences to rural spending and modernist views that articulate an overly non-racial discourse that embraces a shift to urban development. Finally we argue that the failure of spatial planning as proposed by the NSDP was not inevitable, despite real flaws in the policy and its execution. The dithering on spatial policy that surrounded the NSDP must be understood as the outcome of political contestation within the ruling party and a misplaced conflation of the categories of rural and African.     

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.     

Landscape and the philosophy of aesthetics: is landscape quality inherent in the landscape or in the eye of the beholder?

The paper proposes that landscape quality assessment may be approached on the basis of two contrasting paradigms, one which regards quality as inherent in the physical landscape, and the other which regards quality as a product of the mind – eye of the beholder. These are termed, respectively, the objectivist and subjectivist paradigms. These paradigms underlie the surveys of the physical landscape and studies of observer preferences.Examination of these paradigms through the approaches taken by philosophers from Plato to modern times demonstrates the ubiquity of the paradigms in underlying human perception of landscape. Until recent centuries, the objectivist paradigm provided philosophers with the basis for understanding beauty, including landscape beauty. However, the philosophers Locke, Hume, Burke and particularly Immanuel Kant identified beauty as lying in the eyes of the beholder rather than in the object. The parallels between Kant's aesthetic philosophy and contemporary theories of landscape quality based on an evolutionary perspective are examined. Most philosophers over recent centuries have adopted the subjectivist view of aesthetics.The paper concludes by proposing that only the subjectivist model should be used in research of landscape quality.     

Bridge user cost estimation – a synthesis of existing methods and addressing the issues of multiple counting,workzones and traffic capacity limitation

Efforts to incorporate the concerns of bridge users in bridge investment evaluation are often stymied by lack of a comprehensive framework for assessing different user costs. There is a need to synthesise and update existing user cost estimation techniques so that the incorporation of user costs in bridge investment evaluation can be more consistent and streamlined. Secondly, a bridge detour may occur for more than one reason, thus there is a danger of multiple counting that could cause overestimation of user costs. Thirdly, user costs during bridge workzones have rarely been considered in the literature. To address these issues, this article presents a framework for comprehensive estimation of bridge user costs, an approach to address the multiple-counting problem, and a methodology for bridge workzone user cost estimation. Furthermore, the article develops a method to estimate bridge user delay cost due to traffic capacity limitation. The methodologies are demonstrated using a case study.     

The politics of resilient cities: whose resilience and whose city?

It is vital to acknowledge the socio-political complexity of the deployment of the term ‘resilience’ and to develop a more unified set of expectations for the professions and disciplines that use it. Applied to cities, resilience is particularly problematic, yet also retains promise. Like resilience, the term ‘city’ is also subject to multiple contending definitions, depending on the scale and on whether the focus is on physical spaces or social communities. Due to cities and city-regions being organized in ways that both produce and reflect underlying socio-economic disparities, some parts are much more resilient than others and therefore vulnerability is often linked to both topography and income. Uneven resilience threatens the ability of cities as a whole to function economically, socially and politically. Resilience can only remain useful as a concept and as progressive practice if it is explicitly associated with the need to improve the life prospects of disadvantaged groups. This dimension is often lost in definitions of resilience drawn from engineering and ecology, but remains central to conceptualizations linked to social psychology. To improve the prospects of cities proactively (and reactively), there is a need to unify the insights from the multiple professions and disciplines that use ‘resilience’.     

Greyness and colour desires: the chromatic politics of the panelák in late-socialist and post-socialist Czechoslovakia

The article investigates the function of colour and greyness in relation to housing estates and panel buildings [paneláks] in Czechoslovakia. While the significance of chromatic symbolism to architectural discourse and practice has persisted between the 1970s and today, three different moments of relating colour to the panelák are identified. In late socialism, the discourse of grey registered the critique of the panelák voiced by architects and the nomenklatura. Simultaneously, future socialist alternatives were imagined in colour. Late-socialist desire for colour is interpreted in the context of a wider struggle to reform architectural industrialisation, revive the ideological function of architecture and rehabilitate the living environment of housing estates. In the 1990s the desire for colour surged, but it was geared to leaving socialism behind. The trope of greyness converged with a blanket dismissal of socialism. The article documents that in post-socialism architects gave up on the question, and the reality of housing estates and the process of applying colour to panelák façades moved into the hands of home owners. Their vernacular use of colour had a double rationale: to differentiate one panelák from another and to dissimulate its form and tectonics. In the wake of the recent housing crisis architects took issue with these vernacular patterns. They denounced them as garish chaos and assumed the role of experts who would put this chaos in order. This is interpreted as the beginning of a new moment, in which the panelák is rediscovered as an object of cultural heritage while its social and political determinations are disregarded.     

Moving towards more cohesive and polycentric spatial patterns? Evidence from the Czech Republic

Territorial cohesion discourse represents normative and ideological vision of ideal spatial practices that should be applied in order to ensure balanced and polycentric spatial development. However, spatial diversity of existing territorial settings often diverge from political representations of spaces. Using the Czech Republic as a case study, the paper focuses on the development of urban system hierarchy by analysing the changes of work-commuting flows in the post-socialist period. The results show that the configurations of everyday spatial routines and functioning of real urban systems differ from political imaginaries to a great extent and are moving towards a more polarized pattern.     

‘The party’s over’: critical junctures,crises and the politics of housing policy

The key argument set out in this article is that historical and comparative forms of investigation are necessary if we are to better understand the ambitions and scope of contemporary housing interventions. To demonstrate the veracity of our claim, we have set out an analysis of the UK housing polices enacted in the mid-1970s as a basis for comparison with those pursued 40 years later. The article begins with a critical summary of some of the methodological approaches adopted by researchers used to interpret housing policy. In the main section, we present our critical analysis of housing policy reforms (implemented by the Labour government between 1974 and 1979) noting both their achievements and limitations. In the concluding section, we use our interpretation of this period as a basis to judge contemporary housing policy and reflect on the methodological issues that arise from our analysis.     

Housing and the elderly in Singapore – financial and quality of life implications of ageing in place

In spite of the unprecedented success of publichousing in Singapore, the rapid rate at whichthe population is greying is causing housingstress in the matured Housing and DevelopmentBoard (HDB) estates. Although new housingoptions such as studio apartments are beingprovided by the public sector while a recentlyformed housing cooperative is developing aretirement village, the majority of the elderlyin Singapore prefer to age in place,notwithstanding the imbalance between thedemands of their homes and the functioninglevel of the elderly persons' physical andbiological systems. This implies that homemodification, rather than new-built elderlyhousing, may be a more pragmatic solution tothe elderly Singaporeans' housing problems thatcould also improve their quality of life. Since85% of the population of Singapore live inpublic housing, this paper examines the typesof home modifications that could be carried outto the existing stock of public housing so asto create a suitable living environment for theelderly. In addition, the paper considers thehousing finance predicaments of the elderlySingaporean and explores possible financinginstruments that could be implemented tosupport home modifications for Singapore'sgreying population. The paper concludes thatsince home modification(s) could improve thequality of life of the elderly persons morethan specialised housing, public funds shouldbe diverted from building new specialisedhousing to home modification(s) for elderlyhome owners.     

‘Clubification’ of urban public spaces? The withdrawal or the re-definition of the role of local government in the management of public spaces

This paper reports on a case study on the forms of urban public spaces governance that are emerging in the UK out of a rearrangement of governance responsibilities between local government, communities and private interests. Based on cases of public spaces in London under a variety of different governance arrangements, the paper critiques the dominant explanations of those processes, and suggests a far more complex picture in which empowerment and disempowerment of stakeholders of various types happen at the same time, along complex lines defined by geography, strength of stake and representation of that stake in a formalized governance transfer contract. As the paper suggests, the resulting ‘localization’ of governance, the devolution of governance responsibilities to those local actors with the stronger stake in them, does not intrinsically reduce the publicness dimension of public space, but it reshapes that notion towards one with a variety of ‘publicnesses’, with their own governance dynamics and positive and negative consequences.     

Do cities or suburbs offer higher quality of life? Intrametropolitan location,activity patterns,access, and subjective well-being

Critics deride American suburbs as dull, aesthetically displeasing, socially isolating, unhealthy, environmentally unsound, and lacking in accessibility. However, the dramatic shift of the American population to the suburbs in the post-WWII period suggests suburban living may have advantages. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, this paper examines whether residence in a principal city versus the suburbs offers a more emotionally satisfying lifestyle. First, the findings show that demographically similar city residents and suburbanites engage in a very similar amount and composition of out-of-home activities. Second, the ratio of travel time to activity time for specific travel/activity couplets is lower for city residents for a few activities, and lower for suburbanites for others, but on the whole the differences in accessibility implied by these travel time prices are minor. Third, the activities in which city residents and suburbanites engage are associated with very similar degrees of subjective well-being (SWB), including both life satisfaction and affect. The most noteworthy difference between the two geographies is that suburbanites have modestly but measurably higher SWB than demographically similar urbanites in terms of feelings of happiness (hedonic affect), a sense of meaning (eudaimonic affect), and life satisfaction. These findings suggest that there may be advantages to suburban living.     

Emissions of VOCs,SVOCs, and mold during the construction process: Contribution to indoor air quality and future occupants’ exposure

Building materials and human activities are important sources of contamination indoors, but little information is available regarding contamination during construction process which could persist during the whole life of buildings. In this study, six construction stages on two construction sites were investigated regarding the emissions of 43 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 46 semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), and the presence of 4 genera of mold. Results show that the future indoor air quality does not only depend on the emissions of each building product but that it is also closely related to the whole implementation process. Mold spore measurements can reach 1400 CFU/m³, which is particularly high compared with the concentrations usually measured in indoor environments. Relatively low concentrations of VOCs were observed, in relation to the use of low emissive materials. Among SVOCs analyzed, some phthalates, permethrin, and hydrocarbons were found in significant concentrations upon the delivery of building as well as triclosan, suspected to be endocrine disruptor, and yet prohibited in the treatment of materials and construction since 2014. As some regulations exist for VOC emissions, it is necessary to implement them for SVOCs due to their toxicity.     

Aquifer characteristics and water quality of Miocene–Pleistocene sediments, Kuwait

Al-Atraf is one of the water well fields of Kuwait supplying Kuwait City with the brackish groundwater obtained from the Kuwait Group aquifer of Miocene–Pleistocene age. The study determined the hydrogeological and hydrochemical characteristics of the groundwater in order to identify the major chemical processes that influence the groundwater quality of the study area. The results of the aquifer test analyses indicate that the Kuwait Group is a confined to semi-confined aquifer, with a transmissivity ranging between 62 and 321 m²/day. The flow net analysis implied that the groundwater moves from southwest to northeast. The estimated transmissivity values agree well with those calculated from the aquifer test. The results of the chemical analyses data of the Al-Atraf field show that the groundwater is mainly brackish, of NaCl and Na₂SO₄ water types. The groundwater is undersaturated with respect to halite, gypsum and anhydrite and supersaturated with respect to quartz, dolomite and calcite in the direction of groundwater flow. The average Pco₂ of the groundwater is higher than the Pco₂ of the earths atmosphere indicating that the groundwater is supplied with CO₂ during the infiltration processes and dissolves the carbonate minerals under closed-system conditions.     

Ventilation,indoor environment quality and climate—comparison of European and Singapore office buildings

Indoor environment quality audits were performed in six European countries and in Singapore using the same methodology. Five to eight office buildings were audited in each country. The audits included airflow rate measurements, energy audit, indoor air quality (VOC₁ CO₂, dust concentrations), and questionnaires to occupants. Questions to occupants addressed their health, their comfort and well-being, as well as their perception of their environment. This paper compares the results obtained from these audits, with particular attention to the effects of ventilation or air conditioning systems and climate.

The number of building related symptoms is, on the average, significantly smaller in the buildings audited in Singapore than in Europe. One of the reasons may be the non-smoking policy common in Singapore. It is also once more observed that buildings are often over-warmed in cold climates and overcooled in warm climates. Surprising, but not new, is that there are no correlations between specific air flow rates and perceived air quality or health, as long as airflow rates are within accepted standards.     

Rock mass quality and preliminary analysis of the stability of ancient rock-cut Theban tombs at Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna,Egypt

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - The ancient Theban tombs at the hillside cemetery of Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna (SAQ), west of Luxor, Egypt, were excavated mainly in the...