From urban renewal to local development. New conceptions and governance practices in the Italian peripheries

This article explores the relationships between changes in the conception of urban peripheries and changes in urban renewal policies, mainly focusing on policy debates and theoretical discourses developed within Italy. The aim is to test the usefulness of a non‐conventional approach to urban peripheries, both from a theoretical and practical point of view. According to this approach, urban peripheries can be thought of as plural and complex places, which are considered to be a fundamental part of the city and as the builders of urban identity. The article initially explores the changes in describing and interpreting urban peripheries, showing how they must be related to actual changes in urban settlement dynamics, as well as to changes in the theoretical frameworks used to understand the phenomenon of the Italian ‘urban periphery’. The article then shows how changes in interpretation have redefined the objectives and methods of policy interventions in the Italian context. Finally, certain critical issues will be discussed, in particular the origins of urban renewal policies and their recent evolution; the redefinition of the local authority role, and the relationships between institutional and social projects and activities. In this view, institutional projects are considered to be the formal projects carried out by public actors, for example municipalities, in order to manage the change in urban peripheries while social projects are understood as the informal practices of inhabitants of peripheries that change their living neighbourhoods.     

Making urban real estate markets work for the poor: Theory, policy and practice

This paper explores the relationship between theory, policy and practice, linking urban real estate markets and poverty alleviation. The paper argues that the contribution of urban real estate markets to poverty alleviation has not been optimised due, in part, to inadequate or inappropriate policy. The article attributes this to conceptual and methodological problems arising from the traditional neoclassical analysis of urban real estate markets, ambivalence to the idea that freer markets in real estate are a good thing for the urban poor and insufficient regard to lessons of experience from years of implementing urban anti-poverty land projects. Based on new analytical perspectives provided by institutional economics, this paper proposes specific policy interventions more likely to facilitate pro-poor outcomes in urban real estate markets.     

URBAN PAUPERIZATION UNDER CHINA'S SOCIAL EXCLUSION: A CASE STUDY OF NANJING

ABSTRACT: This article articulates how two new urban poverty groups, namely the new urban poor and poor rural migrants, are pauperized under China's social exclusion. We argue that the two poverty groups experience different pauperization processes and are subjected to distinctive social exclusions with relevance to their institutional‐based status and changes in it. The urban poor experience status change from being beneficiaries of the planned economy to being victims of the market economy, and become a vulnerable group characterized by market exclusion and limited welfare dependency. The status of poor rural migrants changes from being institutionally inferior farmers in the planned economy to being a marginal group of urban society, which is now subjected to institutional exclusion and the resultant social exclusion. This research argues that positive social policies should be considered and a social security system should be established to pay more attention to the development issues of the urban poor.     

中国城乡建设用地发展的理论解释模型研究

当前,由于国内外既有研究缺乏系统的理论解释模型的支撑,使得我国城镇建设用地低效蔓延与农村建设用地"人增地减"逆向扩张现象并存的根本原因未能得到准确的解释。内生动力反映了事物发展变化的根本动因和本质规律,以城乡建设用地发展的内生动力为切入点,建构城乡建设用地发展的理论解释模型,对于准确描绘城乡建设用地发展进程与实现城乡建设用地高效集约利用都具有重要意义。研究发现,工业化、城镇化、制度安排在城乡建设用地发展中起着决定性作用。基于此,本文尝试建构了一个由工业化、城镇化、制度安排构成的中国城乡建设用地发展的理论解释模型,并从城市规划学科视角提出了实现我国城乡建设用地高效集约利用的对策建议。     

Sustainable Urban Transport in Pakistan: An Institutional Analysis

The study of transport institutions in Pakistan indicates that transport solutions are primarily a matter of the export of knowledge from the developed to the developing world, mainly driven by international development institutions. This transfer results in a mismatch of transport policy with local needs. The aim of this article is to explain this mismatch in urban transport capacity in Pakistan. By applying the theoretical framework of path dependence, the article explores how urban transport solutions in Lahore become locked-in over time as a result of weak institutional capacities in local institutions. The article concludes that the institutional field in path dependence requires full treatment for institutional change to occur in order to develop sustainable urban transport policies in Pakistan.     

工程项目中的道德风险研究

道德风险作为工程项目风险的一种,对项目有着独特的影响.讨论了道德风险发生的内因与外因,指出人类的逐利性和侥幸心理是道德风险发生的内因,信息不对称和制度缺陷导致的所有权不完整是道德风险发生的外因,而事前监督不力和事后惩处不够则是其诱发因素.接着用一个简单的模型说明了道德风险的不可避免性.并针对道德风险的原因给出了几点控制建议.     

在对阻力的预期判断中进行规划

当自下而上的规划占据主流地位时，上层政府机构尽管忽视了舟共部门规划但仍保留针对发展的批评制度机制。在援引了新工业化国家为城市贫民提供住房和就业问题的例子后．文章阐述了在一个有效规划中，规划的本体论和程序论是不能相互分离的，因为规划程序很大程度被其欲解决的特定问题的本质所左右。因此，规划理论家需要甘问题的本质有更好的认识，以便为规划操作者提供制度上的洞察力，以应对当问题以特殊方式被提出时可能会遇到的阻力。     

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.     

Local strategic partnerships in England: the continuing search for collaborative advantage,leadership and strategy in urban governance

Local Strategic Partnerships are being established in England to provide an inclus ive, collaborative and strategic focus to regeneration strategies at the local level. They are also required to rationalize the proliferation of local and micro-partnerships set up by a succession of funding initiatives over the last 25 years. This article explores their remit, resources and membership and discusses how this initiative relates to theoretical work on urban governance, community engagement and leadership. It concludes by debating whether urban policy in England is now entering a new and more advanced phase based on inter-organizational networks with a strategic purpose. But questions remain about whether the institutional capacity is sufficient to deliver strong local leadership, accountability and community engagement.     

Delai Sam: social activism as contemporary art in the emerging discourse of DIY urbanism in Russia

Delai sam (do it yourself) is a deeply rooted phenomenon in Russian life. However, as a form of contemporary art, this phenomenon has taken on an activist tenor in post-socialist urban Russia. Founded in 2010, the Delai Sam Festival of Urban Actions represents a politicized approach to DIY urbanism in today’s Russia, in which artists, designers, activists and scholars are joining together to develop alternatives to official visions for the design and planning of their cities. This article critically examines the discourse of the first few Delai Sam festivals in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and related urban interventions, to understand how these actions are both situated within their local context, and linked discursively to global trends in art and urban activism. DIY actions like Delai Sam open windows into the convergence of art and social activism, the aesthetic and the political, currently taking shape within the global city.     

Planner's Notebook: Community Policing and Planning

Community policing programs are being embraced by police departments across the country, and this has important implications for planners. Community police officers are being asked to engage in broad-based community problem solving and are adopting many of the goals and methods of community development planning. This article presents a definition of community policing and provides examples of community policing programs in two cities, Asheville and Greensboro, North Carolina. It also identifies the benefits of cooperation between planners and community police officers and presents findings from a research project on the implementation and impacts of community policing in the cities studied. Specific examples of how planners and community police officers have worked together to improve the quality of life in urban neighborhoods are also provided. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the obstacles to cooperation between planners and community police officers and how they can be overcome.     

Local policymaking and concentrated poverty: the case of Buffalo, New York

Concentrated poverty has been the subject of extensive debate among urban scholars in recent years. Several different variables have been examined in analyses of concentrated poverty, but the impacts of local policy making have not been given much attention. This article examines the role of local policymaking in the creation of concentrated poverty in the US city of Buffalo since the 1930s. Through an examination of local policy making in public housing, redevelopment and education, as well as a discussion of open housing and interstate highway construction, the paper documents how local policies have shaped residential and institutional segregation, and therefore the concentrated poverty that results. This perspective stands as an alternative to existing explanations that focus on macro-economic change, while it builds on explanations that focus on the role of residential segregation. Although local governments are clearly constrained in their ability to deal with poverty, the article concludes with policy suggestions to address this problem.     

基础设施维护投资失衡的成因及对策研究

从基础设施投资中新建投资与维护投资失衡的现实问题出发,研究了导致这一现象的原因,并提出了相应的发展建议,指出基础设施投资应当在新建项目和旧有项目维护上进行重新分配,对经济发展的意义更大。     

Ageing in Place: The Out-of-Home Travel Patterns of Seniors in Victoria and its Policy Implications

The decade immediately after the end of the Second World War gave rise to three key societal developments in Australia—a dramatic increase in the birth rate and car ownership, plus an acceleration of the suburbanisation process. Five decades later, these three developments would converge and give rise to a new public policy problem: a spatially dispersed ageing population. To address this problem, Australia has opted for an ‘ageing in place’ strategy. While this strategy has been embraced by many, it poses a number of serious challenges for both policymakers and seniors alike. Foremost amongst them is the issue of being able to access outside of the home those things that are deemed essential to one's well-being and quality of life. This article explores this issue through an assessment of the out-of-home travel behaviour of a sample of seniors who live in or on the outskirts of metropolitan Melbourne. It investigates why seniors in three different case study areas need to travel outside the home, how often and how far, plus what modes of transportation are used. The study establishes that if an ageing in place strategy is to continue then seniors must be able to access a wide range of services and facilities either in their immediate neighbourhood or surrounding area. Urban and regional planners will need to respond to this emerging issue as the number of seniors projected to retire and live on into their late 80s is going to triple in the coming decades.     

Reappraising UK transport policy 1950–99: the myth of 'mono-modality' and the nature of 'paradigm shifts'

This article has two main aims. First, it employs a case study of UK transport planning to address the commonly held view that the practice of transport planning in 'developed' nations commonly had a single paradigm during the second half of the twentieth century. It challenges the view that this paradigm underpinned as it was by a particular set of practices and influences, led to road construction as the overriding policy solution. Rather, policy is best conceived as being geographically differentiated between inter- and intra-urban movement; and policy outcomes are explained by reference to a detailed analysis of the institutional relations of policy-making and the dominance of a professionalized policy network in particular. This sheds light on the second of the paper's aims, which is to highlight the difficulties associated with conceptualizing changes in practices and policy as 'paradigmatic'.     

沥青混凝土路面施工中离析现象分析及处理措施探讨

本文结合工程实例,从公路工程沥青混凝土施工中的离析现象的原因分析入手,并在具体科学计算的基础上,从各个方面详细分析介绍了沥青路面施工中离析现象,针对性地提出了具体解决措施,对其施工技术进行探讨。     

The Anatomy of Housing Stress in Sydney

The issue of housing affordability is now the focus of a number of policy interventions in Australian metropolitan areas. In this article data from the ABS 1996 Census and 1999 National Housing Survey are used to unpack the geography of Sydney's unaffordability problem at the local level and looks at the numbers, distribution and characteristics of low income households in housing stress.     

Problems with the T-Method

This article shows that the T-Method, a new numerical method for optimizing duct networks, fails under certain conditions. The authors discovered this phenomenon while they were developing software that implements the T-Method. The method worked fine until they used C-coefficients that are referenced to the dynamic pressures of duct sections other than the duct sections to which the C-coefficients are actually assigned. (Such C-coefficients are important because duct designers use them to account for the dynamic pressure losses at junctions and crosses.) The T-Method became unstable and it produced grossly oversized ducts.To prove that certain C-coefficients cause problems for the T-Method the authors devised two realistic one-dimensional problems which differ only in one aspect: problem number one contains a C-coefficient that is referenced to an adjacent duct section while the C-coefficient of problem number two is referenced to the section it belongs to. For problem one the T-Method produced a duct diameter that deviated significantly from the true optimum, but it gave accurate results for problem two.The authors studied the theory of the T-Method to find an explanation for the above-mentioned findings. The only part of the theory that seemed suspicious was the assumption that a certain derivative is negligible. The assumption seems necessary for the T-Method scheme but the creators of the T-Method do not prove its validity. The authors show that the T-Method gives the correct answers when this assumption is avoided. Unfortunately this can only be done for one-dimensional problems.In conclusion: the results presented in this article show that the T-Method is unable to optimize duct systems that contain C-coefficients referenced to duct sections other than the section to which the coefficient is assigned. This article does not propose a solution to this problem. However, it does prove that the T-Method cannot be used in certain circumstances, which casts doubts on its overall practicality.     

Network Governance in Contested Urban Landscapes

Urban planning is one of the policy fields where new forms of governance are developing. The article focuses on governance networks as one emergent form of governance in urban planning. In governance literature, discourse networks are seen as a threat to representative democracy. This article argues that the consequences for democracy depend on the type of network that develops and its performance in relation to democratic norms. Governance networks are discussed through the lens of democratic network governance, the utility of which is explored as an analytical tool in a case study of urban planning in Norway. In this context a governance network was constructed as a response to market-orientated planning practice in order to enhance citizen participation and public debate. The aim of this article is to discuss the relevance of the theory of network governance relating it to new forms of participation in public planning processes. The study shows that governance networks could strengthen democracy, though important questions about meta-governance, however, remain unsolved. The article also shows that networks operating in an institutional vacuum tend to fail in institutional capacity building.