The shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong

This paper focuses on the development of Hong Kong's cultural economy and its translation into urban space. On the one hand it focuses on recent economic development and planning strategies to develop a post-colonial identity based on the international cachet of attracting creative industries. On the other hand, it considers the development of grassroots initiatives that herald the potential articulation of Hong Kong as a culturally dense global city. These grassroots initiatives are analyzed from the perspective of their problematic relationship with urban space, and how urban planning both supports and hinders cultural development. The paper argues that top-down planning is in large part catalytic, yet at the same time can run counter to the development of genuine artistic expression. It stresses the importance of ‘middleground’ actors in facilitating the development of spaces for artistic creation, particularly in their productive interlocking with different forms of artistic expression and public policy initiatives. The middleground can be conceived of as a relational space produced by various processes, actors and structures operating at different scales between institutional actors and the interests of ‘underground’ creativity. The article concludes by problematizing the role of middleground actors and underlines the value of ‘unpacking’ the middleground in order to account for the contested and negotiated processes it embodies. Renewed attention to these processes will contribute to enhancing the development of sites of artistic expression in Hong Kong and other emergent contemporary contexts.     

Analysis Framework for the Low Carbon Eco-City Regulatory Plan Administration System: The Case Study on the Planning of Eco-City of Taihu New City,Wuxi, China

Chinese cities need the appropriate administration system and governance model to support the implementation of low carbon eco-city projects, and to effectively scale up this urban development model across the nation. Currently, local planning authorities are piloting the implementation of these low carbon eco-city projects through the statutory Regulatory Plans system(the local district zoning plans system). However, the focus has been put primarily on the use of the relevant technologies and the control through design approval. There is a lack on research and study on the establishment of an effective planning administration and governance environment for the subsequent promulgation of this development model. This situation is affecting the speed in the scaling up of the implementation of low carbon ecological projects in Chinese cities. This paper argues that while technology applications and design issues are important factors, attention shall be put to setting up innovative planning administration and governance models for the statutory Regulatory Plan to facilitate the implementation of the low carbon eco-city projects. This paper puts forth an analysis framework on the administration and governance system which includes 4 governance components:(1) Administration platform and local capacity;(2) Planning conditions and approval process;(3) External public policy context;(4) Developers involvement and participation. A case study was undertaken based on Taihu New City eco-city project located at Wuxi, China. Based on research and analysis of the project implementation process, the study examines the challenges faced by the local planning offi cials and development companies during the implementation stage of the low carbon eco-city project. Finally this paper puts forth initial recommendations that could lead to further research in this important area.     

探析绿色建筑-节能设计对城市低碳生态路径发展的影响

本文结合低碳生态城市规划理论和实际工作,分析了多样性、紧迫性、阶段、中庸和中国低碳生态城市发展等基本特征。然后,提出了文化体系的思想和应遵守的六个方面,以及城市规划对低碳生态城市的发展与政府职能的实现路径、建议转变的要求。     

基于“生态城市”理念的城市规划工作改进研究

目前,我国的城乡发展面临着巨大的变革。随着城市化日程的不断加速,生态城市成为可持续发展的最佳选择。本文对基于“生态城市”理念的城市规划工作改进进行了探究和分析,以期对我国生态城市的规划工作有所参考。     

Designing a ‘green’ building: expanding ambitions through social learning

The process of creating a specific building – Miljøbygget in Trondheim, Norway – is analyzed in order to understand how the project team's ambitions expanded to embrace ‘green’ issues and create new targets. The decisions and roles of key actors are investigated regarding these goals and criteria. The analysis draws on two concepts. First, translation theory is used to highlight the potential role of new knowledge or technology that originates outside of the project. Second, the concept of social learning is employed to understand the process of expanding ambitions, developing goals and criteria within the project, and how this is related to the collective exploration, discovery and analysis of new practices. The wider implications are considered with respect to innovation in the construction industry. The project's initial moderate energy efficiency ambition was transformed, first into stricter energy efficiency goals, then into broader environmental aims. The resulting innovation is an ambition-enhancing, experience-based and enthusiasm-driven process of social learning in the project team, marked by interpersonal trust, including trust regarding competence and contractual relations. Translation efforts were also found to be important for bringing new knowledge into the project. The conclusion discusses some policy implications.     

低碳生态城市的内涵、特征及规划建设的基本原理探讨

对低碳生态城市的理论相关问题进行探讨.包括:低碳生态城市的内涵、低碳生态城市的基本特征以及低碳生态城市规划建设的基本原理等.并对低碳生态城市的内涵、基本特征与规划建设基本原理之间的关联性进行了初步分析.     

Mind the gap: Towards performance measurement beyond a plan-execute logic

Project performance measurement aims to identify deviations from intended goals and reduce ‘the gap’ between actual and expected performance. However, despite extensive measurement and control efforts, the gap is hard to close and, intriguingly, not necessarily related to the project's perceived performance, which is what will ultimately influence a stakeholder's satisfaction. Based on service quality research, this study explores the differences between perception and expectations of performance. Our mixed method study involving eighteen interviews and 85 survey responses in an IT-enabled change context shows that expectations and perceptions are fundamentally different concepts. As they are different, managing the gap between expectations and perceptions may be a nugatory task. The paper expands the literature on project performance measurement by questioning its foundations and offering a first step towards developing a more dynamic and subjective understanding of project performance that is consistent with a project's evolving nature.     

Mastering the urbanization process. The urban questions of engineer August Mennes in the Antwerp agglomeration

Processes of urban expansion at the turn of the twentieth century have generally been described in terms of ‘regional planning’. However, in the Belgian context, and in Antwerp more specifically, the concept of the ‘agglomeration’ was put to the fore rather than the ‘region’, and ‘urbanization’ was a more common practice than ‘planning’. This paper shows how a ‘programme of urbanization’ centred on pertinent ‘urban questions’ shaped the contours of the Antwerp Agglomeration. In adopting this perspective of ‘programmatic urbanization’, the paper seeks to place the development of Antwerp extra muros within a different lineage, outside of the quest for comprehensive planning. Recomposing an eclectic catalogue of five pertinent ‘urban questions’, this paper investigates how and to which extent the Study Committee for the development of the Antwerp Agglomeration and its prominent engineer August Mennes, tried to master the urbanization process as it unfolded. Urbanization, then, is framed as a collective practice that generates positive agglomeration effects and surplus values that could not have been produced by individual actors. As such, the paper expands the understanding of urbanization from a random process of capital accumulation to a project that includes the building of social and cultural capital.     

Valuation techniques for infrastructure investment decisions

Public infrastructure owners are increasingly soliciting BOT arrangements to deliver needed infrastructure facilities. Such arrangements potentially preserve a public owner's capital capacity for allocation to projects that cannot support themselves by essentially ‘pulling’ projects from the private sector. Before soliciting these arrangements, however, owners should independently evaluate a project's economic viability to fully appraise the issues and variables involved. Unfortunately, project analysts often apply evaluation methods without regard for their assumptions and limitations. A case study of a toll road project in the USA provides the basis for examining the assumptions behind both traditional and option valuation models. The case demonstrates the use of an option pricing model to augment traditional project evaluation by capturing strategic considerations, in this case the value of project deferment. The presentation illustrates that the selection of a valuation model depends critically upon the characteristics of a project's variables and that informed judgment remains an integral part of the decision‐making process.     

Does entrepreneurial project monitoring and controlling process matter in social enterprises? Evidence from a developing African country

Social enterprises in developing countries act as development agents and are a constituent of the rising ‘social and solidarity’ economy whose established vision is to create social value and generate positive social outcomes. Traditional monitoring limit project managers’ capabilities to probe a project's ‘known – unknown’ impacts. Given that traditional monitoring arrangements persist to be challenging in resolving the high project failure rate in Africa, entrepreneurial project monitoring and controlling process enables project success. Corporate entrepreneurship literature has provided a strong theoretical basis for incorporating entrepreneurial actions, orientations, and decisions into ‘traditional’ project management process. This paper draws primary data from six selected social enterprises in Uganda to examine what constitute entrepreneurial project monitoring and controlling process. The findings support the need for (a) creating room for errors, (b) self-managed teams, and (c) soft skills maximisation amongst entrepreneurial project managers. Implications for strengthening social entrepreneurship ecosystems in developing economies to accelerate and scale-up social ventures to deliver social and economic value is discussed.     

Organizing for knowledge creation in a strategic interorganizational innovation project

A fundamental challenge for interorganizational innovation projects is employing diverse actors’ knowledge, expertise and perspectives for situation-specific demands of complex innovation. Innovation advancement is dependent on the degree to which knowledge is used and synthesized to address emerging and situation-specific demands of innovation. The goal of this study is to shed light on organizing for joint knowledge creation in a strategic interorganizational innovation project. Based on an inductive analysis of interview data from one strategic interorganizational innovation project, we identified the iterative process, self-organizing working groups and dynamic participation as practices through which the actors involved arranged and enacted their joint efforts, namely, knowledge creation and progress of innovation. This study contributes to research on managing strategic interorganizational projects by suggesting that organizing, which involves structural and informal organizing practices, supports managing strategic interorganizational projects where the diverse actors’ knowledge integration is at the core of the innovation project's goals.     

概述低碳生态城市规划要点

该文在对目前低碳生态城市的理论进行系统梳理的基础上,从认识论的角度阐释有关中国低碳生态城市的理论框架体系,针对当前很多低碳生态城市规划实际上并未融入低碳、生态的理念和要素,与传统城市规划并无两样,从发展、规划等方面,以及低碳生态城市规划的编制缺乏整体性等问题,该文首先阐明低碳生态城市规划的内涵和原则,并从区域规划、总体规划、详细规划等不同规划编制层面对低碳生态规划的要点和发展进行了阐述,最后对低碳生态城市规划应考虑的重点进行了系统分析。     

从控规指标——以长沙市天体系上落实低碳生态城市建设初探心区解放垸方案为例

随着资源、气候和环境等问题日益严峻,发展低碳生态城市迫在眉睫。如何将低碳生态规划落实到土地利用及其空间环境的发展上,有效地引导城市实现低碳生态化的开发建设,成为现今研究的重要问题。本文以长沙市天心区解放垸的低碳生态控制性详细规划方案为例,从控制性详细规划的层面进行探析,望通过一系列的低碳生态指标来控制、引导城市建设低碳生态化,促进我国城市的低碳生态化可持续发展,实现“人-城市-自然环境”和谐共生的最终目标。     

‘Downtown Is for People’: The street-level approach in Jane Jacobs' legacy and its resonance in the planning debate within the complexity theory of cities

Jane Jacobs suggested that ‘just and diverse streets’ reflect the functioning of the city as ‘a problem of organised complexity’. The topic has recently been at the centre of the debate on her work. This paper looks at Jane Jacobs's reconstruction of the way a city works with reference to self-organisation and ethical aspects (trust and respect for diversity). The paper uses ‘Street-Level epistemology’ (SLe), which is a theory on the knowledge of ordinary people, in order to examine different ways to approach contemporary complex urban systems, resulting from myriads of self-organised practices and ‘vital little plans’. The paper employs Jacobs's early works on cities, in particular, a chapter in her book titled ‘Downtown Is for People’, to outline a proper Jacobsian Street-Level approach (SLa) substantiated by an ethical-cognitive component. This SLa is associated with the Complexity Theory of Cities (CTC), to improve the understanding of how complex, non-linear, discontinuous, and contingent urban systems work while constantly progressing and transforming. The paper draws on Jacobs's legacy and advocates progress through specific advancements in the debate around theoretical planning within CTC that describes the city as an emerging complex order.     

我国低碳生态城市空间规划的进展与启示

通过总结扣梳理上海市崇明陈家镇生态社区和虹桥商务核心区低碳生态城市的目标分解、空间规划、控制与引导性要素和管理体系与机制等方面的规划建设实践,以期对我国低碳生态城市规划理念、低碳生态城市规划技术、低碳生态城市规划控制以及低碳生态城市规划管理方面起到启示和借鉴作用。     

传承与超越——中西方原始生态文明观的差异及对现代生态城的启示

从古文化自然观、古建筑美学、城镇选址模式、城市空间结构、园林文化等五方面分析了中西方原始生态文明的差异,在此基础上,指出中国的生态城市规划建设必须扬弃西方现代主义的不良影响,汲取中国传统文化中的原始生态文明理念,重建"人类——城市——自然"的共生关系,重建"人类——城市——历史文化"的共生关系。     

Critical research on eco-cities? A walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City,China

This article uses the narrative tool of a walk through Tianjin Eco-City, China, as an entry point in raising and discussing key questions in contemporary eco-city research. Eco-city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent in policy and political-economic discourses in a variety of locations as new urban spaces where blueprints for low carbon economies can be trialled. In light of this, the article highlights the key necessity of, firstly, considering scale when analyzing eco-city ‘futures’. Secondly, the article argues for the need to interrogate eco-cities’ definitions, as well as evaluation, performance and monitoring frameworks, as this will aid in critical analyses of the marketing, presentation and actually built urban environments in eco-city projects. Thirdly, the question of internal social resilience and the emergence of communities within newly-built eco-cities needs to be assessed: this is of crucial importance in light of the exclusive, gated nature of several flagship eco-city projects under construction at the time of writing. Lastly, the article argues that research on eco-city projects needs to consider not only the high-tech, new urban environments materialized as eco-cities, but also the production and reproduction of large, often transient populations of low-paid workers who build eco-cities and who form what the article calls the ‘new urban poor’, forming ‘workers’ cities’ on the edges of flagship ‘sustainable’ urban projects worldwide.     

低碳导向的城市空间布局规划技术探索

文章从城市空间布局关键要素与碳排放关系的入手,进行城市空间布局规划与碳排放的相关性分析研究,并以广州海珠生态城为例,针对城市规划涉及的土地利用、交通组织、设施与建筑布局等方面,提出绿地碳汇网络、公共交通导向开发、土地混合使用、街区尺度控制、公共服务设施均衡布局、地下空间利用、结合气候的建筑布局等规划技术,从空间布局的角度探索适合特大城市中心区进行碳减排的有效途径和方法。     

The determinants of the vertical boundaries of the construction firm: comment

A method is presented for allocating resources to construction activities and for scheduling construction projects under resource constraints by considering the effects that such resource limitations may have on the tendency of the activities (and the project in general) to fall into disarray and behind schedule. Resource‐constrained scheduling problems (RCSP) are very common in real‐life construction projects and because of their nature their numerical solution is computationally intensive. The method utilizes a measure of each activity's perceived level of disorder stemming from resource limitations. The proposed technique aims to optimize the number of resources assigned to the activities and to schedule the project so as to minimize the overall project's tendency to fall into disorder. The entropy‐like metric used in the scheduling optimization is related to the ratio of required over‐assigned resource units per activity, and its utilization allows a planner to take into consideration project disorder when planning a project. A case study and its mathematical framework help demonstrate the ‘duration vs. disorder’ trade‐off analysis that planners should perform when considering possible activity resource assignments and the feasibility of these assignments in terms of induced disorder. The entropy optimization method proves to be a powerful project‐planning metric.     

山地低碳复合城市规划策略研究——悦来生态城规划模式

低碳生态城市是当前城市建设的主要方向,也已成为城市的主要规划模式。但目前我国生态城市建设仍处于起步阶段,并没有一套完整的方法与策略可以全面指导生态城市的建设。本文结合悦来生态城规划模式,从复合利用、集约高效的角度探索山地型复合生态城规划策略,力求探索出一些符合山地城市特点、适应山地条件、在城市开发中具有一定推广价值的规划策略。