The River Nile and Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam: challenges to Egypt’s security approach

There are increasing challenges to Egypt’s security approach to the River Nile. The river is under immense pressure. This paper examines the significance of the Nile for Egypt and the factors and problems of diminishing its waters. It reviews Egypt’s long-time policy on the Nile and concludes that this policy is difficult to maintain in the face of the present and future challenges. It recommends a non-security multilateral solution for the benefit of all parties.     

Developmental Urbanism,City Image Branding and the “Right to the City” in Transitional China

From the 1980s, urban-led economic pursuits, city image building, and residency control of rural migrants have been three key elements which are complementary yet conflicting in China’s development path. Whilst the two former are pro-growth oriented, the “low-image” and “potential risk to slum formation” of rural migrants are found by the state to be incompatible with the modernist urbanism sought after. Under the state’s ambitious city branding and intensive-cum-high value operations, the paper revisits Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey’s notions on the “right to the city”. It highlights the social injustice issue of differentiated citizenship in terms of inequity of access to services and inequality between urban and rural origins. City-branding efforts have indeed contributed towards economic efficiency and land use rationalization but are characterized by an asymmetrical power and spatial redistribution process filled with inequalities against migrant workers and deprivation of rights. Recent developments have shown that the state has compromised and become more people-oriented and inclusive in its approach towards rural migrants.     

Parking Policies in China’s Metropolises: Rationales,Consequences, and Implications

Metropolises in China, a rapidly motorizing nation, are confronted with the challenge of managing parking pressures. Given the generally increased affordability of cars, most local authorities are making efforts to provide more parking spaces to accommodate additional cars. Although the worldwide paradigm of managing parking is shifting from a supply-focused approach to a restraint mind-set, China has been slow to follow this trend. To untangle the factors that contribute to delays implementing desirable parking policy reforms, this paper examines the development of parking policies in China. This paper characterizes the challenge of parking in Chinese cities as a spatio-temporal mismatch. In the context of rapid motorization, local authorities are subject to political pressure to cater to the increased parking demand by increasing the minimum parking requirements. However, this approach fails to mitigate parking shortages and results in unintended consequences, including relatively high parking density in central and transit-rich areas and imbalanced parking across neighbourhoods. This paper suggests four strategies, including market-based pricing, geographically differentiated supply regulations, and district-based parking management (“Parking management is referred to as various policies and programs that result in more efficient use of parking resources”). These strategies represent policy-reform targets to establish more efficient parking systems in rapidly motorizing urban settings worldwide.     

Knowledge and power in regenerating lived space in Treasure Hill,Taipei 1960s–2010: from squatter settlement to a co-living artist village

To the government, the squatter settlement on the ex-military site in Treasure Hill was an eyesore that should be removed to make way for a park. To the social activists, including academics and students, the spatial organization and the consequent social cohesion found in the settlement were valuable knowledge on use values of the evolving lived space. Mastering this knowledge and capitalizing on the wider socio-political opportunity of the new mayor's emphasis on cultural development, the social activists have succeeded in developing a co-living discourse, arguing for the merits of having artists-in-residence, welfare housing tenants and youth hostel sojourners to co-develop a sustainable, creative learning environment in the historic architecture of the squatter huts. In order to materialize this ideal, they even became the contractual party in implementing the project. The case nevertheless highlights the fragility of organic lived space. While the co-living concept allowed residents the option to stay in the area, the whole saga had led to the departure of many residents, dismantling the coherent community and ending its dynamic self-regenerating process. The experiment of mixing disadvantaged squatter residents and spontaneous artists in a fossilized physical setting has not been conducive to regenerating self-sustaining lived space.     

Smart Grid in China: a promising solution to China’s energy and environmental issues

Smart Grid presages an advanced power grid that revolutionizes the century-old traditional power grid and the way mankind uses energy. In China, the pressure on the current grid exerted by growing demand, environmental issues and the unbalanced energy use structure makes the transition to a ‘smarter’ and ‘cleaner’ grid inevitable. This paper firstly contrasts the concepts and research priorities of Smart Grid of China and other developed countries; then turns to the situation of Chinese energy and power use. China has the largest generating capacity, 79% of which is coal-fired plants. And China is also the largest carbon emitter in the world. Despite the challenges, China is also the most promising market for Smart Grid. The components of Smart Grid, especially the development of renewable energy, electric vehicles and smart substation are reinforced in the Chinese 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015). The paper examines also efforts by government, power utilities and research institutes. The paper concludes that developing Smart Grid will be beneficial both to China and the world.     

Global warming: Greek students’ belief in the usefulness of pro-environmental actions and their intention to take action

The aim of this study was to construct novel indices to indicate, in a quantitative manner, the relationship between students’ willingness to undertake specific pro-environmental actions and their belief in the usefulness of those particular actions in the context of global warming. A questionnaire was used to determine the views of 1444 Greek secondary school students. For some actions (for example, recycling and switching off un-used electrical items) the extent to which students professed a willingness to act was greater than might be expected from the degree to which they believed the action would be useful. For other actions (for example, using public rather than private transport or buying smaller cars) the degree to which students were willing to act seemed less than might be expected, given their belief in the usefulness of the action. The data also provided an indication of the potential effectiveness of education about different actions. For some actions, such as issues about consumerism, this relationship was weak; here, even if people could be persuaded of the usefulness of the action, they might not make changes in their behaviour. For issues such as these, other inducements may be needed to persuade people to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. For other actions, such as economising on the use of electricity in the home, the relationship was stronger; in these areas environmental education could well be effective.     

The role of policy learning in urban mobility adaptation: exploring Vancouver’s plan to remove the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts

ABSTRACT

In 2015, Vancouver’s City Council approved a plan for removing the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts and replacing 2.6 km of vestigial expressway infrastructure with a surface boulevard, parks, public space, and housing. This article explores whether policy learning from other cities influenced Vancouver’s decision. Using the Dolowitz-Marsh framework, we found evidence that planners,politicians, and the public introduced examples of expressway removal and infrastructure adaptation during Vancouver’s policymaking process and that lesson drawing influenced the outcome. The policy learning revealed here shows how North American cities can advance a more equal redistribution of urban space by removing expressway infrastructure.     

Segregation and conflict in post-modernist Caracas: from Pérez’s Gran Venezuela to Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution*

Reviewing political and economic changes underwent since the so-called Gran Venezuela, characterized by the nationalization of oil and mammoth projects during the first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP, 1974–1979), the article focuses on the socio-spatial segregation and urban conflict staged in Caracas until Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution (1999–2013). It is a timespan when, at an urban scale, the oil-booming and modernist capital of the 1950s – initial episode of the article’s review – gave way to a less progressive and more deteriorated metropolis, which has become one of Latin America’s most polarized and conflictive arenas. Drawn from a research project about ‘The City in the Thought of Urban Venezuela’, the article outlines, from a methodological standpoint, an urban overview throughout some images, which intertwines the political and intellectual discourse about the city with its changing structure and perception. In this respect, the article’s approach is arguably inscribed within the urban cultural history in Latin America. For decades after CAP’s second government (1989–1993), the article intends as well a closer examination of segregation in the public space, considering that Caracas has become Latin America’s testbed of political and spatial polarization, fuelled by the unrest characteristic of Chávez’s neo-populist revolution.     

Ian McHarg’s Ecological Planning in The Woodlands,Texas: Lessons Learned after Four Decades

The Woodlands, Texas, is well known as a new town development (29,000 acres) that followed Ian McHarg’s ecological planning approach. Primarily by literature review, this paper indicated that early development that followed McHarg’s approach has met the original planning goals to preserve the forest environment and to minimize the development impacts on watershed hydrology. McHarg’s approach was largely abandoned after the ownership change in 1997. Barriers came from each side of the development: homeowner (demand), developer (provider), designer (professional service) and government (policy-maker). The Woodlands’ environmental planning success in early development was also attributed to developer George Mitchell’s personal commitment and financial support, the US Housing and Urban Development’s $50 million loan, and the relatively flexible planning system in the 1970s. However, in the current planning and economic systems, it would be a hard undertaking to replicate McHarg’s ecological planning approach at this scale.     

Reinforced concrete in Louis Kahn’s National Assembly,Dhaka: Modernity and modernism in Bangladeshi architecture

Louis Kahn is often credited with having in his National Assembly in Dhaka (1962–1983) introduced modern architecture to Bangladesh. In fact at least as technologically advanced construction as any he employed was already in use there. Nor was he the first to use a sophisticated abstract esthetic in what was from 1947 to 1971 East Pakistan. The importance and originality of the National Assembly instead resides in the care with which he built in reinforced concrete and the forms into which he required that it be cast. These were esthetic decisions rooted in a particular theoretical position; they were located outside established modernist practice of the time in both South Asia and the United States. Indeed operating at such a great remove from home may have heightened Kahn’s authority to implement these forms even as it substantially complicated their execution.     

Shaping Seoul’s memories: the co-evolution of memorials,national identity,democracy and urban space in South Korea’s capital city

This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the diverse memorials erected in Seoul since 1953. It explores how these memorials have expressed shifts in national identity towards democracy since the end of dictatorship in 1987. It illustrates how commemorative intentions in this massive, rapidly-changing metropolis have intersected with other urban design aims and pressures. The analysis reveals an evolutionary progression in memorial themes, from heroic statues that re-establish roots of Korean national identity and independence, to marginal grassroots memorials and wider themed precincts that present more inclusive, democratic, complex narratives of identity and history.     

“Cloister in a Carnival”: Electric Light and Gendered Atmospheres in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Manhattan

This essay investigates the “political aesthetics” of electric lighting in Manhattan during 1913–1922, particularly the conflicting styles of public and private lighting, both urban and domestic, portrayed within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 The Beautiful and Damned. Using the method of “topographic literary analysis”, it traces the novel’s two main protagonists, of different gender and class, as they move through New York and its various levels of society. At times, Fitzgerald’s own perspective is introduced via other autobiographical writings. Two main points are emphasised: firstly, “topographic” literary analyses might provide an embodied-relational method for re-narrating and accurately situating historical experience, particularly its subtler, affective, or atmospheric properties previously deemed too difficult to register by historians; secondly, electric lighting is shown to hold significant agency over Fitzgerald’s human protagonists, acting not as a mere prop, but a third protagonist in and of itself, with effects that are both highly gendered and classed.