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.     

City problems: differing concepts and approaches

Most cities in the so-called ‘developed’ world have an ageing if not senile infrastructure. Curiously, the sewers and roads built in the nineteenth century are withstanding the ravages of time better than more recent constructs. Nowhere have the problems achieved such a high profile as in the USA: ‘The infrastructure crisis is upon us’ … ‘America in ruins — the decaying infrastructure’… ‘Rebuilding America…’.     

What’s in a Name? the use of Tusk Tenons and Face-Pegged Through Tenons in England

From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, carpenters’ and builders’ manuals have defined tusks as shoulders above or below tenons. In recent decades, especially in English archaeological literature, the term ‘tusk tenon’ has come to be applied in a variety of ways to what are more generally known on the Continent as ‘through tenons with face pegs’. To meet the demands imposed by a growing typology, it is suggested below that ‘tusk tenon’ should be applied only in the sense defined in early manuals and that ‘through tenons’ with or without ‘face pegs’ would, as a result, be better understood as a discrete and separate group of carpentered joints. The latter have been found in Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon contexts, as well as on the medieval waterfront in London. In contrast with the Continental evidence, there was a decline in their use in English medieval buildings, followed by a resurgence in the seventeenth century.     

Doing the Just City: Social Impact Assessment and the Planning of Beersheba,Israel

This article documents the making of a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) for Beersheba, Israel, using a modified version of Susan Fainstein’s ‘just city’ vision. Four key dimensions are analyzed: equality, built environment, diversity and democracy. The SIA reveals that the new plan offers positive steps towards narrowing spatial inequalities. However, it overlooks threats of social dislocation as a result of massive development planned for the city. It also ignores the needs of minorities and creates a democratic deficit. SIA is shown to be needed if planning is to face the challenge of the twenty-first century – doing the just city.     

Dabaodao: the planning,development, and transformation of a Chinese (German) neighbourhood

Dabaodao is an old city district located in the heart of the historical centre of Qingdao (north-eastern China). It was created over 100 years ago as a segregated ‘Chinese town’ under German colonial rule. This article embarks upon a journey into the past, reviewing the continuity and change of Dabaodao and its courtyard-style houses known as Liyuan over last century of socio-political turmoil. It discusses how they have evolved and transformed under different city administrations, beginning from the early colonial years, to the Republican era, the Maoist years, all the way into the reform period. Specifically, the article illustrates how city-planning, laws, and regulations as well as a general urban development ideology during one time period conditioned and shaped those of following periods, eventually turning Dabaodao into what it is today: a dilapidated and poor inner-city neighbourhood with an uncertain future whose historical significance and preservation value remains highly contested and under debate. This article reviews colonial city planning and its impacts in Qingdao, an under-represented city in the English language literature on colonial China; moreover, the article links Dabaodao’s diverse history to current contestations over urban renewal, hereby engaging the complex issue of using the past in the present.     

Polycentric development practice in master planning: the case of China

Towards the end of the twentieth century, polycentricity was introduced into China as a planning concept. Subsequently a number of super/mega city regions began to adopt polycentric development spatial planning strategies, which are designed to facilitate more sustainable and balanced development. This paper seeks to identify the main differences in application of polycentricity between China and the West, and explore the major emerging thematic strands of polycentric development practice, as illustrated through an evaluation of master planning in eight super/mega city regions across China. In particular, the paper highlights the divergent interpretations of polycentricity in master plan-making practice and shows how plans have been adjusted to help deliver the idea of polycentric development. Although the concept of polycentricity is relatively new in China, it has already become a normative approach used to determine future spatial structures. While there is an absence of an articulated rationality to ‘decide’ whether this is (or should be) an ‘ideal’ model, already it has gone beyond Western approaches of initially using polycentricity as an interpretative tool to describe urban realities.     

住宅小区园林景观与规划、建筑设计综合化的必要性

中国住宅小区园林景观设计经历了从上个世纪末到如今十几年的快速发展,但设计过程依然延续传统的流程和方法,暴露了诸多的问题。为解决这些问题,园林景观与规划、建筑设计综合化的必要性日趋明显。     

La Plata: an advanced nineteenth century new town with ancient roots

La Plata, the new capital of the Buenos Aires province was founded as a descendant of the rich and homogeneous family of new towns based on the Spanish American model. The Spaniards established hundreds of settlements in America according to the early rules that were soon officially acknowledged and imposed by the Crown. King Philip II established in 1573 his ‘Ordinances concerning discoveries, settlements and pacification’. This system worked for more than four centuries because the Spanish American countries accepted the colonial rules long after their independence. La Plata offered one of the last opportunities for the development of these ideas. The urban theories which were originated during the nineteenth century left clear traces in La Plata's layout. La Plata became one of the first cases in which the nineteenth century ‘progressist model’ – the hygienic city, as defined by Françoise Choay – was adopted and actually built. The fortunate combination of the two models turned La Plata, its qualities and elements into a complex and unique example in urban history.     

Decision-makers,Expert Witnesses and Advocates: The Roles of Planners in Merits Appeals

Darwin, in Australia's Northern Territory, faces urban planning challenges consistent with those reported in ‘resource peripheries’ around the world. The city has recently experienced strong population growth associated with resources and construction projects, and an increase in public sector workers sent to address the challenges faced by remote (particularly Indigenous) populations. The Northern Territory Government is determined to foster further growth, and promotes ‘major projects’ in urban development as the key. Analysis of the public debates about two recent major projects (the Waterfront Development and the Lyons residential development) reveal a planning process consistent with the clientelism observed by Rayner and Howlett (2009) in resource peripheries in Canada. The risks of clientelism are both the marginalisation of important internal publics and the institutionalisation of ‘temporariness’ as the driver of growth. Shifting to a more consultative planning process might help stimulate internal development, but could also put at risk the relationships that the Northern Territory Government has established with external investors.

     

Democratic design experiments in urban planning – navigational practices and compositionist design

In the field of urban planning, public participation and inclusion of citizens have been practised and researched for many years. However, a focus on co-creative urban planning practices seems to have gained more focus over the last decade and calls for new urban planning practices, which allow experimentation and imagination, and at the same time take its outset in the existing networks in the city (such as visions, strategies, regulations and practices) when planning for the future. In this article, we investigate how a compositionist design programme can be translated into the practices of urban planners. We find that the notion of ‘democratic design experiments’ in many ways meet the demands of the increasingly complex field of urban planning and set out to explore how such a design programme can be applied in practice. We suggest ‘navigational practice’ as a way of describing how urban planners deal with ‘drawing things together’ in urban space and introduce ‘sensitivity’, ‘staging’ and ‘mobilization’ as interconnected elements of this practice. We exemplify the significance of these navigational practices by analysing two democratic design experiments in the area of urban waste management in Copenhagen. The article concludes that compositionist design is a powerful contribution to the framing of urban planning projects and that navigational practice can be a productive way of operationalising democratic design experiments in the urban context.     

Decentralized water management: rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse in an urban area of Beijing,China

Large-scale centralised wastewater treatment system has often prevailed in industrial countries, and has been regarded as a successful approach during the last century. However, transfer of this highly water-consuming system and so-called ‘end-of-pipe’ technology to developing countries, especially in fast-growing cities with scarce water resources, has been extremely limited. Decentralized water treatment is not a new technology and has been successfully implemented in many rural areas worldwide. However, there are few applications in urban areas. This study at Tianxiu Garden in Beijing, China, investigated the potential and feasibility of water management based on a decentralized approach, but modified for application of greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting in a densely populated semi-urban area. A high degree of drinking water substitution (more than 25%) could not be attained by rainwater harvesting. Recycling of treated greywater for toilet flushing was shown to be an efficient method for minimisation of drinking water consumption, and a more suitable technique than rainwater harvesting for saving water in Beijing, China.     

The Provision of Social Infrastructure in New Urban Development in Three Australian States

Improvements in the planning and provision of social infrastructure in new urban development in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney have been implemented over the last decade. The main focus of attention has been on improved ‘metropolitan coordination systems’ or ‘urban development programs’. The systems operating in the three states are examined with particular reference to the origin of the initiatives, the bureaucratic and financial arrangements which are in place, and the respective roles of local and state governments. Major issues for the future are identified, inparticular the importance of establishing standards and costings of human services, the role of local government, the significance of funding issues and the need to explore alternative sources of financing.     

‘Unintended Cities’ and Inoperative Violence. Housing Resistance in Yangon

ABSTRACT

Urban development and city expansion in Yangon, Myanmar happened through the forced resettlement of people from the city toward the periphery. Forced resettlement has become the main mode of urban production since the British colonisation, and is sustained by laws, orders and policies. Building on Benjamin’s and Agamben’s essays on violence, we claim that it is possible to interrupt the endless cycle of law and violence by locating violence outside the debate around ‘means and ends’. Stemming from the authors’ experience and repeated encounters with practices of social mobilisation of women in Yangon over the last five years, we have traced the potential for deactivating the ‘signature’ of violence in the everyday practices of resistance of urban dwellers in the township of HlaingTharYar in Yangon. Through the incremental occupation, trespassing and building up of peripheral ‘vacant’ land, organised women’s groups are challenging the spatial order established by post/colonial regimes.     

Unintentional landscapes

The presence of ‘unintentional landscapes’ invites reflection on the difficulties in defining marginal or interstitial spaces, or indeed the concept of landscape itself. In some cases, so-called wastelands or terrain vague have been appropriated as spaces of adventure, creativity or discovery. In other cases, these anomalous spaces have been the focus of anxiety or disdain, or simply erased on account of their putative ‘emptiness’ to make way for more lucrative forms of land use. In recent years, however, fragments of spontaneous nature have been incorporated into landscape design, or even mimicked through the adoption of a ‘wasteland aesthetic’. Marginal spaces appear to transcend existing Eurocentric circuits of landscape discourse by offering multiple meanings and manifestations. Indeed, the cultural and scientific interest in these spaces lies precisely in their complexity and uncertainty.     

Implementation of improved wetland systems as a ‘zero‐discharge‐technology’ in Poland

This paper discusses results from the implementation of a ‘zero‐discharge‐ technology’ primarily for single households, as well as hotels and small residential urban and rural areas. During a 15‐year span, 5600 improved wetland systems (IWS) were built, and approximately 50% of treatment wetlands in Europe are located in Poland. The first section of this paper discusses water and wastewater management and its development trends. Particular attention is paid to creating sustainable water management in rural areas due to increased necessity in these regions. The second section presents the principle of the IWS, which consists of two options. The third section discusses the current requirements regarding the quality of treated wastewater in Poland. The fourth section presents the effectiveness of the implementation of this system by the Institute for Applied Ecology and the further prospects of ‘zero‐discharge‐technology’ development. The last section discusses the obtained results in the reduction of pollution.     

Towards garden city wonderlands: new town planning in 1950s Taiwan

This article explores the historical context, process and result of introducing and implementing ‘new’ town planning in early post‐war Taiwan. The two so‐called ‘garden cities’ are examined: Jhong‐Sing New Village and Yonghe City, both of which were formulated in the mid‐1950s by the same group of local planners. It reveals that the assumed necessity of importing Western planning paradigms arose from the abrupt escalation of urban concentration caused by the late 1940s mass migrations from China. To cope with this unprecedented population growth, planning profession was swiftly established. The novice planners, in search of a reference for developing ‘new’ towns to decentralise excessive urbanisation, modelled their ‘new’ town planning on English suburban morphology. In the absence of an input of external expertise, the planners appeared to mistake aesthetic order and pastoral imagery of low‐density residential development in England as practically viable solutions to the pressing urban problems in Taiwan. In a false hope that adopting Western ideas and practices would quickly lead the island to a better world, Taiwan initiated the importation of planning paradigms. This planning transfer not only evidently manifests a mode of ‘borrowing’ in post‐colonial countries in international diffusion but also re‐articulates the disseminating nature of modern planning and the existence of one‐direction flows characterising the global dynamics of diffusion in the twentieth century.     

‘The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore’: representations of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.     

对21世纪数字化公共图书馆建筑模式的探讨

通过分析 2 1世纪科学技术的飞速发展给图书馆建筑带来的影响 ,从数字化、信息化的角度 ,阐述了 2 1世纪图书馆的数字化进程的必然性 ,展现出了数字化公共图书馆的建筑模式。     

The ‘desiccator difficulty’: surprise,indignation and the local politics of planning for sanitary technology in nineteenth century Melbourne

ABSTRACT

‘Desiccators’, large machines that used steam and beaters to reduce waste into powder that could be sold as fertilizer, were one solution put forward in response to late nineteenth century Melbourne’s sanitation problems. Despite some initial enthusiasm for them, challenges with finding locations for desiccators were soon dubbed the ‘Desiccator Difficulty’. The ‘Desiccator Difficulty’ is one, all but forgotten, story of the fragmented governance contributing to Melbourne’s delays in coordinating a metropolitan sewerage system. This paper examines desiccators as a story with parallels in and legacies for planning today. It focuses on the role of local property-based conflicts – arguing these constituted emergent forms of planning, underscoring an increasing urban separation and control later embodied in metropolitan planning and infrastructure. Fragmented standoffs and bylaws also rationalized spatial disparities – with suburban municipalities refusing to house desiccators, nightsoil was sent to outer shires for decades. The paper argues Melbourne’s socio-technical transition to metropolitan sewerage and governance occurred not because water-borne technology was necessarily superior, but because legal assumptions and property interests made alternatives difficult to maintain. Desiccators are examples of ‘muddling’ details that belie simple narratives of technological change, and which have implications for how wider urban environmental change occurs and is understood.