Does City Governance Matter for the Urban Poor?

Decentralization has focused attention on city government but, at the same time, the growth of civil society means that urban governance is not limited to city government. Little attention has been paid, either in the literature or in practice, to the institutional and political processes which determine whether and how the poor benefit, or how the poor can influence the agenda of city governance. Drawing on studies of nine cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, this paper identifies three broad areas which are of importance: a political system in which the votes of the poor count; a city government system with some capacity to deliver; and a dynamic civil society which can press the case of the poor. After reviewing what is involved in each of these areas, the paper identifies a number of specific policies and practices which impact on the urban poor.     

城市风景区研究(二)——与城市协调发展的途径

当前,城市风景区与城市之间存在着诸多矛盾,但两者之间互利发展的历史关系又说明他们之间的矛盾是能够协调的,城与景应作为整体统筹考虑。基于城景协调发展的理念,分别从城市视角、城市风景区视角及两者相互关联的视角,尝试提出了解决城景矛盾、促进城景发展的10个途径。期望风景园林工作者及其他相关行业的工作者能够在工作实践中理解并应用城景协调发展的理念,在保护城市风景区的同时促进城市风景区与城市的共同发展。     

The urban context for adjustments to the planning process in post-soviet Russia: Responses from local planners in Siberia

This paper examines changes to planning practices in different types of Russian cities that inherited varying levels of administrative status and economic diversification during the Soviet period. Considered the hallmark of the previous regime, planning faces a tenuous fate because of its perceived incompatibility with a democratic, market-based society. For many cities, urban development plans created during the Soviet period do not represent or accommodate the needs of post-Soviet society. Local planners, whose main responsibility previously was to execute these now-defunct plans, are redefining their role within city administration in order to remain relevant. The responses to these fundamental issues at the local level vary by city-type because of post-Soviet realities distinctly impacting each type of city.     

Sensitivity analysis for a continuum traffic equilibrium problem

This paper develops a sensitivity analysis for the continuum traffic equilibrium problem of a city with several competing facilities. In the city, the customers’ origins are continuously dispersed. We assume that the customer demand is dependent on the total cost of patronizing these facilities. Specific travel cost–flow relationships are considered. The choice of facility in the continuum transportation system follows a user equilibrium principle in which from each origin, no customer can reduce their individual cost to patronize any of the facilities by unilaterally changing route or facility. The problem can be formulated as a minimization problem that is subject to a set of constraints and solved with a finite element method. The sensitivity analysis is based on the implicit function theorem at the equilibrium solution. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the applications of these sensitivity analysis results.     

Digital neighborhoods

With the advent of ‘big data’ there is an increased interest in using social media to describe city dynamics. This paper employs geo-located social media data to identify ‘digital neighborhoods’ – those areas in the city where social media is used more often. Starting with geo-located Twitter and Foursquare data for the New York City region in 2014, we applied spatial clustering techniques to detect significant groupings or ‘neighborhoods’ where social media use is high or low. The results show that beyond the business districts, digital neighborhoods occur in communities undergoing shifting socio-demographics. Neighborhoods that are not digitally oriented tend to have higher proportion of minorities and lower incomes, highlighting a social–economic divide in how social media is used in the city. Understanding the differences in these neighborhoods can help city planners interested in generating economic development proposals, civic engagement strategies, and urban design ideas that target these areas.     

Same Neighbourhood … Different Views? A Confrontation of Internal and External Neighbourhood Reputations

Residents and non-residents are likely to think differently about a neighbourhood's reputation. Relatively little is known about the similarities and differences between these internal and external types of neighbourhood reputation or the relationship between reputations and ‘real’ or ‘objective’ neighbourhood characteristics. This paper addresses two points: first, the extent to which neighbourhood reputations differ between and within groups; second, the extent to which these neighbourhood reputations are associated with measured neighbourhood characteristics. Data from a specially designed survey carried out in 24 neighbourhoods in Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, are used. Analysis of the data showed that neighbourhood reputations are rated higher by residents and estate agents than by other city residents. Within the group of other city residents, differences were found in how neighbourhood reputations are rated by socio-economic status, ethnicity and educational background. Further, it was found that neighbourhood reputations are correlated with measured social characteristics of the neighbourhood, while physical and functional neighbourhood characteristics are of less importance.     

Models for Conditioning Aging of Residential Structures

Abstract

This article, using data obtained during a survey conducted in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania—just outside of Philadelphia, tries to answer four basic questions concerning suburban use of the central city. First, how often do suburbanities take advantage of (or use) the cultural, recreational, and shopping facilities of the central city? Second, are there any meaningful social-economic characteristics that affect the rate at which suburbanites use central city facilities? Third, are commuters more likely to use central city facilities than are suburbanites who do not work in the city? And, fourth, does length of residency in a suburban community affect the rate at which suburbanites use the central city? The survey showed that about 50 percent of the suburban families use the city once a month or less. Meaningful relationships were found between most social-economic factors studied, including regular central city commuting and length of residence in the suburb, and central city use.     

绿地系统对建设生态城市的影响——以保定市绿地系统规划研究为例

生态城市是人与自然的完满而和谐的理想城市,现代城市规划的目标是将城市规划与生态相结合,将城市的发展与自然生态有机结合,实现可持续发展。绿地系统建设是建设生态城市的中心环境,绿地系统在城市生态系统中发挥着重要的作用。但是现阶段我国的绿地系统建设仍然存在一些问题,我们必须积极解决这些问题,使我国的生态城市建设到达一个新的高度。     

American planning in republican China, 1911-1937

This paper argues that in China, between the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the onset of the fullfledged Chinese war of resistance (Kanzheng) against Japan in 1937, American planners and Chinese municipal experts trained in American universities initiated significant planning schemes in several Chinese cities. This influence marked a crucial change in Chinese city planning because from the mid-19th century to 1911 it had primarily been British, French or German planners who had exerted foreign influence on Chinese urban form, particularly in the treaty ports of eastern China. Three of the best examples that demonstrate this shift of emphasis to American-based ideals of municipal progress are the plans for Guangzhou (Canton) in the early 1920s, the new capital plan at Nanjing (Nanking) and the greater Shanghai plan in the late 1920s. Although some scholars have analysed the Shanghai and Nanjing plans, few have explored the ways city planning during the republican period reflects a pattern of North American influence in the reshaping of Chinese urban form. In identifying this pattern, this paper will argue that Guangzhou was a first testing ground where Chinese politicians, within a decade after the first American city planning conference of 1909, consciously tried to apply up-to-date American planning principles associated with the 'city functional', the 'city scientific' or the 'city efficient' to a Chinese city that they perceived as inefficient. There were two initial spheres of influence associated with this American connection: (1) an institutional one, in which Guangzhou planners experimented with a commission form of American municipal government which, since 1900, had become popular especially in the American west and midwest; and (2) an influence related to urban space and form, as planners widened several narrow streets of congested Guangzhou and demolished its city wall, thereby following the gospel of Americans such as Benjamin Marsh who, since 1907, had been proselytizing about the ill effects of urban congestion. Guangzhou's planning experiments in the 1920s were at the forefront of further American planning connections, manifested in four ways: (1) through the actions of largely American-trained Chinese municipal experts, who studied in the US using scholarships from the Boxer Indemnity Fund; (2) through American planning advisors, such as Henry K. Murphy, who were hired by Chinese politicians to provide direct planning assistance; (3) through the formation of professional organizations, such as the Association of Chinese and American Engineers; and (4) through publications in English and Chinese that disseminated information about city planning, urbanism and architecture to a professional audience. This paper will discuss these trends as they apply to Chinese cities of the Republican period, with particular attention to Nanjing and Guangzhou. A fuller recognition of these Chinese cities' planning histories, as well as those of others such as Xiamen (Amoy), Shenyang (Mukden) or Fuzhou (Foochow) that followed their lead, demonstrates that American planning efforts in the western Pacific were far more pervasive than has previously been assumed. Although the initiatives of Daniel Burnham and William Parsons in the Philippines after the American military victories there in 1898 are well-established, and although Walter Burley Griffin's Canberra plan of 1913 is even more fully documented, the work of American planners in China, or of Chinese planners deriving their concepts from American practices, is less well understood. This paper clarifies the historical perspective associated with these planning tendencies.     

青岛胶州湾海底隧道青岛端连接线规划探索

青岛胶州湾海底隧道青岛端连接线经过滨海老城区.老城区三面环海,地形起伏大,内有大量风貌保护建筑,路网密度大,道路断面尺寸小,有多套单行系统.连接线规划根据以上特点,统筹兼顾,在保证基本交通功能的基础上,重视研究重大交通设施对城市用地、城市空间、老城区的更新等方面的影响.     

西北城市绿色基础设施之绿地建设生态途径

基于西北半干旱地区城市或傍山依河、或依交通要道等的城市布局特点,在水资源作为主导限制因子的条件下,老城区城市用地紧张,绿色空间较少,城市基础设施多以灰色基础设施为主,城市生态环境问题日益成为制约城市经济社会发展的限制因素。解决这些城市问题切实可行的办法,就是在城市新区建设时,以绿色基础设施作为先行,以绿色基础设施理论作为城市绿地建设的生态途径指导。     

Initial Settlement and Intracity Movement of Migrants in Monterrey,Mexico

This article presents the results of a study of migrant settlement patterns in Monterrey, Mexico. Two components of the settlement are investigated; (1) points of entry and (2) intra-city mobility. Current notions about migrant settlement patterns in Latin American cities are then examined in the light of these findings. It was found that migrants arriving in Monterrey from rural and small-town backgrounds have tended to concentrate outside the center-most parts of the city on arrival. Generally migrants who changed neighborhoods after arrival tended to direct their moves outward from the site of their initial location. However, even in the case of migrants who settled in the central parts of the city and then moved outward, only a fifth relocated at the extreme periphery. Substantial numbers moved only short distances or moved toward the center of the city. While in recent years migrants involved in peripherally directed moves tended to experience more occupational mobility than other migrants, about three fourths of the outward movers experienced little or no upward occupational mobility between arrival and move. Furthermore, more than three fifths of upwardly mobile migrants either did not move or relocated closer to the center of the city.     

Plan or Projection: An Examination of the Use of Models in Planning

Editor's note: During the past few years land use and traffic models have been developed to the stage at which they are now actively being applied in professional practice. This event has met with both favor and disfavor, ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to unqualified rejection. We are confident that the extremes of these responses cannot long be sustained and that the models will find an appropriate and constructive place in city and metropolitan planning-a place acceptable to all or most members of the profession. We have therefore invited Britton Harris to pose the questions that the models raise. As a city planner who is himself a maker and user of models, but who is also highly respectful of the skills and accomplishments of those who reject them, he is well equipped to examine the issues. In this carefully reasoned and sympathetic essay, in which he makes his own position clear, he has succeeded, we think, in clearly explaining what a model is, in posing some of the important questions that the profession now faces, and in opening the floor for a deliberate and orderly consideration of these central questions. We are eager that the JOURNAL serve as the forum for these deliberations, and the readers are encouraged to participate.     

论城市生命线工程系统的防（火）灾可靠度分析

阐述了保证和提高城市生命线工程系统的防（火）灾可靠度的重要意义。引用了大量火灾及故障案例说明评估城市生命线工程内消防系统的可靠度是一项复杂的系统工程。介绍了当前在不同行业中采用的对复杂系统的可靠度进行评估的一些方法。在对这些评估方法进行比较后介绍了故障树分析法的优、缺点，并指出这种方法完全可以胜任对城市生命线工程系统的防（火）灾可靠度的分析工作。     

The metamorphosis of a historical city: From the Byzantine city Argyropolis to the Ottoman neighborhood Süleymaniye

Anatolia, which has hosted many civilizations since the early ages, is historically very important. While the majority of the settlements of these civilizations are still present where they were founded, there are some historical cities that have disappeared or moved to another place; while some are known with their names only in old sources, the ruins of some of them are found, and some continue to exist in other places because the original places of foundation of the cities were deserted. One of the cities which sought its continuity in another place is Argyropolis. The city which was founded on a sloping area with rich silver mines and which was spread along heights of 1400–1500 m, moved to a valley of a height of 1150 m and some 4 km away from its original place of foundation because of the loss of its socio-economic power. In its original place of foundation, the city was called as Argyropolis and Canca, respectively. After the city was left it was called Eski?ehir (Old City) and Eski Gümü?hane (Old Gümü?hane), respectively; and when it lost its status as a city and reduced to the status of a neighborhood it was called Süleymaniye (The City of Suleiman). The names given to the old city before it reduced to the status of a neighborhood and to the new city refer to the ‘silver mines’, which were an indication of the economic condition of the city. The closure of these mines was to the desertion of the city what the running of these mines was to its foundation and development.     

新兴的南非城市

本文探究了主导南非后种族隔离时期城市发展的影响力量,以及由此产生的一些建筑。文章特别关注于约翰内斯堡这个规模最大、人口最多（3500万人口）的南非城市在这个城市里这些影响力更为强大.文章最根本的论点是关于这些塑造南非当代城市的动态影响力的复杂性,是无法仅由单一方式去阐明或理解的,人们必须借助多重复合的解读方式才能认知它。     

QUALITY OF LIFE AMENITIES AS CONTRIBUTORS TO LOCAL ECONOMIES: VIEWS OF CITY MANAGERS

Is the level of importance attached to quality of life amenities, such as parks and restaurants, influenced by the objectives of the economic development strategy developed by city leaders? This research question drives the analysis presented in this article. We consider municipal leaders’ views of community amenities and how these opinions are influenced by the desire to either create jobs for community residents or generate greater municipal revenue. We evaluate the expectation that the need to generate city revenue will exert the greatest influence on the perceived importance of community amenities. Findings are generated using original survey data from city managers of 133 Texas cities. The results confirm expectations that city managers view quality of life amenities as more efficacious in contributing to revenue generation than job creation. The impact of these findings for the understanding of how city managers promote certain economic development strategies is discussed.     

Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Istanbul: The Use of Digital Modelling as an Heuristic Tool in Architectural History Research

In this paper, we draw upon digital 2D and 3D modelling techniques to analyse two sixteenth-century visual records of the city of Istanbul at that time: the Prospect of Constantinople by Melchior Lorichs (or Lorck) held at the University of Leiden, and the view of the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia in the Freshfield Folio held at Trinity College, Cambridge. We propose that, through digitally-based analysis of these sources that matches aspect ratios and viewpoints, it is possible to extract new evidence for the topography and structures of the city during this period.     

Problematizing data-driven urban practices: Insights from five Dutch ‘smart cities’

Recently, the concept of the smart city has gained growing popularity. As cities worldwide have set the aim to harness digital technologies to their development, increasing focus came to lie on the potential challenges and concerns related to data-driven urban practices. In the existing literature, these challenges and concerns have been dominantly approached from a pragmatic approach based on the a priori assumed ‘goodness’ of the smart city; for a small group of critics, the very notion of the smart city is questionable. This paper takes the middle-way by interrogating how municipal and civil society stakeholders problematize the challenges and concerns related to data-driven practices in five Dutch cities, and how they act on these concerns in practice. The lens of problematization posits that the ways of problematizing data-driven practices contribute to their actual enactment, and that this is an inherently political process. The case study shows that stakeholders do not only perceive practical challenges but are widely aware of and are (partly) pro-actively engaging with perceived normative-ethical and societal concerns, leading to different (sometimes inter-related) technological, legal/political, organizational, informative and participative strategies. Nonetheless, the explicit contestation of smart city policies through these strategies remains limited in scope. The paper argues that more research is needed to uncover the structural-institutional dynamics that facilitate and/or prevent the repoliticization of smart city projects.     

在印度的实践 生态知识城设计

Metro Valley生态知识城,是一个由建筑师和项目开发人在共同的理想的支持下跨越文化的合作项目。不同于通常一堆分离的房子被道路组织在一起的园区规划方式,开放建筑设计了一个漂浮的地毯式巨型建筑,它像一个城市一样,或者说是两个垂直叠加在一起的平行的城市,上面是出入有检查的免税城,下面是对所有人开放的自由城。平行的两个城市夹在双层自然中,即地面上最大限度保留下来的自然地貌和屋顶上人工创造出的自然。"开放建筑"将这个生态知识城构想成很多城市的叠加,如水平城市、绿色城市、智能城市和基础城市,它们共同构成复合的一个整体。Metro Valley生态知识城植根于文化,它的目标是未来。在摆脱无谓的形式游戏的同时,它希望承担起对社会和环境的充分负责。