From a top-down to a bottom-up urban discourse: (re) constructing the city in a family-inclusive way

This paper focuses on urban discourses as powerful instruments intertwined with the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion. First, three dominant contemporary urban discourses developed in the field of urban planning are scrutinized on their inclusiveness of families and daily family life. The attractive city, the creative city and the city as an emancipation machine are examples of urban discourses communicated top-down via reports, debates and media attention. It is argued that these three discourses do not address families as urban citizens nor the very notion of reproduction and its daily manifestation. The exclusionary character of contemporary urban discourses does not only result in a neglect of urban families, it also legitimates non-intervention when it comes to family issues. This conclusion activated the search for an alternative discourse as expanded in the second part of the paper. This alternative discourse is constructed from the bottom-up and is rooted in the day-to-day experiences of urban families themselves. It is a refined discourse, with interrelated geographical scales including the city as a whole, the neighbourhood, the street and the home. This is a city that integrates—as families themselves do—the different domains of life. The city is appreciated for its qualities of proximity, the neighbourhood for its ethnically mixed children’s domains, the street as an urban haven and the house as the place that accommodates private life for each member of the family. This alternative discourse is called the balanced city. The empirical basis is drawn from middle-class urban families in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.     

城乡公共消防基础设施建设发展与创新探讨

公共基础设施建设包含多方面,与人们的衣食住行有着密切的关系,公共消防基础设施是公共基础设施的重要组成部分,也直接关系到人们的生命财产安全.文章主要从城乡公共消防基础设施概念特征阐述入手,明确城乡公共消防基础设施效益的构成,揭露了当前城乡公共消防基础设施建设中存在的问题,从而探讨促进城乡公共消防基础设施建设发展与创新的有效策略.     

Understanding the governance of urban water services from an institutional logics perspective

In recent decades, the urban water sector has experienced accelerating social complexity that derives from conflicting goals and beliefs, making the sustainability of the sector primarily a governance issue. However, existing governance models do not reflect the new reality. There is thus an urgent need to develop an urban water governance model reflecting this increasing complexity, to support sustainable governance. We integrate concepts from sociology, institutional theory and sustainability transitions to build a governance framework that includes interactions of social structures, and practices, shaped by different institutional logics and categorised at strategic, tactic, operational, and reflexive level.     

Metabolism-modelling approaches to long-term sustainability assessment of urban water services

There is a discernible need for a holistic, long-term and sustainability approach in decision-making in water and wastewater utilities around the world. Metabolism-based modelling, which can quantify various flows within an urban water system (UWS), has shown its effective usability for a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of intervention strategies and can be used by any water utility for future planning of UWS. This study presents the main principles of a holistic Sustainability Assessment Framework which can be simulated by using two analytical, conceptual, mass-balance-based models to quantify relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the metabolic flows of the urban water cycle. These two models are WaterMet² (WM2) and dynamic metabolism model (DMM), developed recently under the aegis of the EU TRUST (Transitions to the Urban Water Services of Tomorrow) project. There are clear differences between the two models which make them useful in different contexts and circumstantial situations. DMM is a mass-balance consistent model which quantifies and presents annually-aggregated performance values for system wide energy consumption, emissions, environmental impacts and costs for the entire UWS though it is also possible to derive corresponding indicators for individual sub-systems (e.g. water distribution and wastewater transport). WM2 is the opposite of this, it is a distributed metabolism model which simulates water related and other resource flows throughout the UWS components with a higher resolution both spatially (e.g. multiple water resources and service reservoirs) and temporally (e.g. daily and monthly), and thereby is useful in contexts where utilities would like to focus on further details of the UWS metabolism with the aim to understand and solve specific problems. Overall, these two complementary metabolism-based approaches enable any water utility to quantitatively explore and understand the influences of different external drivers and intervention strategies on future performance profiles linked to any physical, environmental and economic criteria.     

Costs of urban utility water connections: Excessive burden to the poor

A global research programme was undertaken to investigate the actual costs and charges of obtaining a water connection in urban areas. Drawing from the Uganda case study, this paper will contribute to the understanding of the enormity of the barriers of the connection process and costs levelled against the urban poor, and the importance of programmes and pricing structures for enabling access to the water supply systems. The researchers found a mean cost of new water connection of US$500 (median of $197). This is unaffordable for $2 per-day-households, which are therefore unable to access the benefits from piped water services.     

Location choice of Chinese urban fringe residents on employment,housing, and urban services: A case study of Nanjing

Urban fringe area is the most important space for city development. It includes several complicated elements, such as population, space, and management organization. On the basis of local population attributes in the city fringe area combined with people’s movement characteristics in time and space, this article reclassifies basic public service facilities and discusses the relationship between facility layout and housing, employment, and commuter transportation. Through a questionnaire survey in Qiaobei District of the urban fringe area in Nanjing and on the basis of comparative analysis, we discuss the impact factor on the choice of housing, urban services, and the tolerance of commuting time. Our findings indicate mutual promoting and restricting connections among living, employment, and services. Workers’ living situation determines their daily behavior, such as dining, shopping, and entertainment. Furthermore, different income levels have a great influence on residents’ choices with regard to places to live and develop their careers     

Strategic planning of urban infrastructure for environmental sustainability: Understanding the past to intervene for the future

Urban infrastructure systems have long lifespans and influence the state of the environment for extended periods of time. Processes of strategic planning for urban infrastructure are thus instrumental to materializing environmental sustainability visions. Continued investments in infrastructure with adverse environmental impacts imply that sustainability priorities are not embedded in planning processes, as these processes tend to follow the path-dependent legacy of older planning paradigms. This study identifies the cognitive framings that underpin the evolution of strategic planning over the last century, to reveal the path-dependent attributes of strategic planning thinking that undermine alternative solutions. To do that, a scoping study of the literature on strategic planning of public infrastructure, from 1900 through 2013, was conducted. The findings reveal how the scholarly paradigms for infrastructure planning have transformed over time, from optimization to sustainability. While the planning practice in cities has often taken up the sustainability discourse in line with the scholarship, its actual attributes might lag behind. Knowledge about these attributes is scarce since the contemporary scholarship often contains aspirational proposals for change and little detail on how planning is undertaken in practice. It is likely that the incremental approach to infrastructure planning, which has been the dominant approach for decades, perpetuates a planning culture which contradicts the requirements for sustainability transitions, by limiting the scope of alternatives to optimizing the status quo instead of creating conditions for change. To develop effective planning interventions towards sustainability transitions in urban infrastructure systems, the paper calls for diagnostic tools that examine the realities of planning practice, and, operational frameworks for bridging historically-entrained modes of practice to sustainability aspirations.     

Strategic green infrastructure planning in Germany and the UK: a transnational evaluation of the evolution of urban greening policy and practice

The evolution of Green Infrastructure (GI) planning has varied dramatically between nations. Although a grounded set of principles are recognized globally, there is increasing variance in how these are implemented at a national and sub-national level. To investigate this the following paper presents an evaluation of how green infrastructure has been planned for in England and Germany illustrating how national policy structures facilitate variance in application. Adopting an evaluative framework linked to the identification of GI, its development and monitoring/feedback the paper questions the impacts on delivery of intersecting factors including terminology, spatial distribution and functionality on effective GI investment. This process reviews how changing policy structures have influenced the framing of green infrastructure policy, and subsequent impact this has on the delivery of green infrastructure projects.     

The cooling effect of green infrastructure on surrounding built environments in a sub-tropical climate: a case study in Taipei metropolis

Green infrastructure that provides cooling service is regarded as a critical urban planning strategy to mitigate urban heat. This study assesses important greenspace and matrix factors that contribute to greenspace cooling effect beyond greenspaces in Taipei metropolis using Landsat 8 satellite imagery. The results indicated that both greenspace and matrix features have jointly affected greenspace cooling intensity, but their cooling contributions to the mean temperature of greenspace and that of surrounding built environments were not necessarily identical or explicit. Larger greenspaces with compact/simple shape, containing more water elements and higher greenness tended to be cooler, whereas higher development intensity, lower tree proportion and fewer water elements in the matrix tended to produce warmer built environments. The influence of these features on temperature outside greenspaces varied by distance. With the distance increasing from greenspaces, the effect of greenspace features dropped and that of matrix features rose.     

Housing the urban poor in post-reform China: Some empirical evidence from the city of Nanjing

This paper provides first-hand empirical evidence about the differentiation of housing conditions among China’s urban poor families based on a case study of Nanjing. The main findings include: (1) the Hukou family registration system has strong differential effects on poor families’ housing conditions; (2) housing conditions among the urban poor are tightly associated with privatization and home ownership, where non-owners face more severe housing difficulties than nominal owners; and (3) resettlement has played a positive role in improving the poor’s housing conditions, but its positive effects are only present in cases where work units or the government has taken the responsibility of housing the resettled poor. These findings show that housing the urban poor in post-reform China is largely: (1) path-dependent, (2) privatization-oriented, and (3) development-driven, and a mechanism that can pro-actively ensure the poor’s basic right to housing is still lacking.     

Comprehensive concept planning of urban greening based on ecological principles: a case study in Beijing, China

Greenspace is an important part of complex urban ecosystems and provides significant ecosystem services. It benefits urban communities environmentally, esthetically, recreationally and economically. Beijing Province is in north of China, and has a total area of 16,807.8 km² and a population of about 13.8 million. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for urban greening of Beijing Province based on landscape ecological principles. It attempts to answer how to establish an urban greening plan at the regional, city and neighborhood levels to achieve long-term sustainability. At the regional level, a big natural and semi-natural forest area in the northwest and an ecological buffer belt in the southeast are planned to protect the environmental quality of Beijing and provide habitats for wildlife. At the city level, a green network system of green wedges, parks and green corridors has been proposed. This green network helps to limit future urban expansion, improve urban environmental quality and serve as habitats and migration routes for wildlife. At the neighborhood level, green extensions and connections of riverside greenway, road greenway, parks and vertical greening permeate into the built-up areas. They provide open space close to residential areas and offer places for recreation. This three-level green system constitutes an integrated ecological network for urban sustainable development of Beijing. For future development of Beijing, urban parks, forestry, agriculture, water and infrastructure should be planned and designed in an integrated way. After this greenspace plan is legislated and completely realized, Beijing will develop an interconnected and integrated network of urban greenspaces. It has the prospect of achieving the aim of “Green Olympic City 2008” and the long-term goal of developing Beijing towards an “Eco-City”.     

A new flood risk assessment framework for evaluating the effectiveness of policies to improve urban flood resilience

To better understand the impacts of flooding such that authorities can plan for adapting measures to cope with future scenarios, we have developed a modified Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to allow policy makers to evaluate strategies for improving flood resilience in cities. We showed that this framework proved an effective approach to assessing and improving urban flood resilience, albeit with some limitations. This framework has difficulties in capturing all the important relationships in cities, especially with regards to feedbacks. There is therefore a need to develop improved techniques for understanding components and their relationships. While this research showed that risk assessment is possible even at the mega-city scale, new techniques will support advances in this field. Finally, a chain of models engenders uncertainties. However, the resilience approach promoted in this research, is an effective manner to work with uncertainty by providing the capacity to cope and respond to multiple scenarios.     

Night and day at the beach: Relating social life to location and infrastructure in a Brazilian city

Brazilian city beaches are public spaces favoring citizens well-being. Urban studies relate built form and infrastructure with urban vitality and coastal studies underline uses as important for beach management, yet few researches relate form and infrastructure with beach uses. Understanding daily life as essential for public spaces and that spatial form relates with uses, this paper assesses time-based relationships between built and natural physical attributes and social life on the beaches of João Pessoa, a coastal city in North-east Brazil. Physical attributes are investigated at city scale - beach type, street network centrality and topography - and seafront scale - land uses, public/private interfaces, public infrastructure, beach sections and water quality. Beach social life was surveyed online, enquiring peoples' beach choice, visiting time and place, activities and evaluation. Infrastructure and street network follow topography and help configure shore and promenade for different landscapes. More central beaches have diverse land uses, well-equipped promenades and lighting and were popular night and day, while less central beaches had less infrastructure and were visited only by day. Findings highlight how physical attributes facilitate uses and, together with peoples’ evaluation, can inform urban beach design and planning.     

Above-ground carbon storage by urban trees in Leipzig, Germany: Analysis of patterns in a European city

Many aspects of global change, including carbon dioxide emissions, have been attributed to urban areas. On the other hand, cities have been found to provide valuable ecosystem services such as carbon storage. The aim of this study is to estimate the above-ground carbon storage in trees in the central European city of Leipzig and produce spatially explicit carbon storage maps. We used stratified random sampling across 19 land cover classes using 190 sample plots to measure carbon storage. In addition, we derived canopy cover from color-infrared orthophotos using an object-oriented approach and Random Forest machine learning. Finally, we apply an error assessment method that includes sampling error, but also uncertainty stemming from allometric equations, and that so far has only been applied to rural forests. The total above ground carbon stock of Leipzig was estimated using both land cover and canopy cover, which was more laborious than just using land cover but reduced the standard error. Canopy cover was approximately 19% of the city area. Leipzig's above-ground carbon storage was estimated to be 316,000 Mg C at 11 Mg C ha⁻¹. The distribution of carbon storage across the city showed the highest values at intermediate urbanization levels. Carbon storage in the city of Leipzig was in the lower range compared to cities in Europe, Asia and the USA, and our results indicate that great care should be taken when transferring values between cities. We provide spatially explicit and detailed maps of above-ground storage that can contribute to ecosystem services assessments.     

Dealing with interrelatedness and fragmentation in road infrastructure planning: an analysis of integrated approaches throughout the planning process in the Netherlands

Planning approaches that integrate road infrastructure and other land uses are being increasingly applied. Dealing with functional interrelatedness and stakeholder fragmentation are the main reasons for this. This article conceptualizes and analyses why and how such integrated approaches can be applied effectively throughout consecutive stages of infrastructure planning. The two case studies illustrate that the concept of integration is applied for strategic as well as operational reasons, and they reveal that these reasons may alternate throughout the planning process. Effective integration is therefore dynamic: it appropriately focuses on strengthening the socio-economic perspectives of a region for the longer term, as well as on the relations between different land uses that are physically adjacent and competing for space within a smaller area. Due to fragmented institutional contexts, successfully dealing with interrelatedness requires an intense level of interaction amongst involved actors. Such “co-production” of visions and plans has two important characteristics: negotiation, and learning about each other’s goals. Ultimately the case studies also show that planning at the infrastructure–land use interface needs institutional mechanisms to guide the alterations between strategically and operationally inspired integration. Contracts with private parties, public participation, and positive conditions for learning about each other’s referential frames are examples of the institutional mechanisms encountered in this study.     

Distributional impacts of food assistance: How SNAP payments to the rural poor affect incomes in the urban core

This paper examines how benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to low-income households spillover between Portland, Oregon-metropolitan core and its periphery trade area. The paper studies the impact of the SNAP program on four income classes by comparing the income increases generated by SNAP in 2006 in each income class in each region with a counterfactual scenario in which the taxes that would be needed from taxpayers in the region to support SNAP are treated as income and spent. The analysis shows that overall, SNAP payments net of taxes stimulate the regional economy and are significantly redistributive.     

Tunnelling of infrastructure: from non-considered to ill considered — lessons from the Netherlands

In The Netherlands, tunnels are in much (public) demand since approximately 1980. Infrastructure is less tolerated in the urban environment, especially when it is elevated above ground. Three different projects for which the authors acted as scientific consultants can serve to demonstrate how problematic it can be to neglect an underground option on the one hand and to make it dogmatic on the other. Existing infrastructure is often seen as both environmentally and commercially damaging, suppressing urban land values. Reconstruction is a difficult task, though, in spite of modern techniques. The Helmond case, where an elevated part of a main road separates the town centre and historical castle and blocks revitalisation of the area, is an adequate demonstration. The proposed replacement with a tunnel proved to be ill considered, i.e. both difficult and costly. Even worse: perhaps the town might do without the road after all! In developing new infrastructure, like high speed train links, urban alignments are avoided because of public resistance. Yet these may prove to be acceptable if tunnelled, whereas an alignment in the rare open countryside is locally despised. This proved to be true in the case of the Amsterdam–Antwerp High-Speed Railway Line (HSL), for the passage of Dordrecht, south of Rotterdam. An urban underground solution was not considered in the government studies. A local proposal, which proved to be quite feasible, was rejected, mainly because it was presented late in the planning process. New types of infrastructure may be developed explicitly for underground use. Lorries are an ever-bigger problem in local distribution, both for the environment and congestion and for trade, dependent on these. Therefore, underground logistic systems (ULS) are proposed more frequently. Perhaps the best-studied one is the Schiphol Airport ULS, intended predominantly to connect air and rail terminals and the world's largest flower auction at Aalsmeer. It showed that the choice for an underground solution can be too dogmatic, not affordable and only partly necessary. Mixed solutions, partly underground, partly on the surface and partly elevated were quite feasible and economically more attractive.     

Implementation as more than installation: a case study of the challenges in implementing green infrastructure projects in two Australian primary schools

ABSTRACT

Green infrastructure delivers a range of benefits for urban water management, amenity, human well-being, and ecosystem health. However, the implementation of green urban infrastructure can be challenging, whether in private or public spaces. In Australia and elsewhere, there is increasing investment in green infrastructure projects in schools. To date, the implementation issues experienced in schools have not been investigated. This article reports on a case study of the range of factors influencing implementation of green infrastructure projects in two primary schools in Melbourne, Australia. Interviews with diverse stakeholders in these projects revealed four key areas of concern for implementation: 1) professional roles and relationships; 2) planning and design; 3) value to the school community; and 4) engagement of the broader community. We conclude that successful implementation is not simply the installation of well-functioning green infrastructure; rather, it is an ongoing achievement that is as social as it is technical.     

Bringing planning to the streets: using site-specific video as a method for participatory urban planning

This article examines videographic planning visualizations and their potential to enrich the modes of communication and participation in urban planning. As a case study, the article introduces a research project conducted in the residential area of Pansio-Perno, in Turku, Finland, where a set of site-specific planning videos was made in collaboration with professional artists. A spatio-visual approach was employed to study the different sites for making the videos, including the sites of video production, the contents of the planning videos, and sites for video presentations. Residents were able to take part in the project by voting between different urban development alternatives with the help of on-site mobile technology. Presenting the results of the participation in public made the process more open, transparent, and visible to local people. Appealing planning visualizations, as well as easily accessible participation methods, are therefore proposed here as a means to improve the approachability and diversity of planning communication.