Community and neighborhood relations in Ankara: An urban–suburban contrast

This paper focuses on community and neighbourhood relations of two high-income districts in Ankara. A suburban and a more traditional urban community are contrasted via a field survey that focuses on attitudes toward certain community values and toward other citizens. The findings indicate that residents in both settings express similar values towards community and neighbourhood relations. Their attitude toward other districts of the city is also similar, indicating an increasing and widespread exclusion of the poor. The varied implications of this investigation, including the nature of the gated community, are explored.     

Topographies of the future: urban and suburban visions in Edward Bellamy’s utopian fiction

In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti-urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.     

The place of urban conservation in the UK reconstruction plans of 1942–1952

During and immediately after World War II, several hundred reconstruction plans were drawn up for the majority of UK towns and cities. These included both those suffering bomb damage, and those relatively or completely unscathed. At the same time, the bomb damage had given substantial impetus to the concept of urban conservation. The ‘listing’ of buildings of special architectural or historic interest was begun. However, the reconstruction plans have much to say - both explicitly and implicitly - about conservation on a broader scale. Many of the plans suggested comprehensive clearance and redevelopment, creating a tabula rasa even if bomb damage had not, albeit during a period of 30–50 years. Few were sensitive to the context of areas and groups of buildings. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence in some of these plans for the emergence of a broader concept of conservation, two decades before Duncan Sandys' Civic Amenities Act permitted the designation of ‘conservation areas’. This paper reassesses the common interpretation of these plans as largely modernist in outlook.     

The suburban perimeter blocks of Madrid 10 years on: how residents’ level of satisfaction relates to urban design qualities

ABSTRACT

In the 1990s, the suburbs of Madrid saw the substantial development of new housing. New plans provided for 200,000 new homes over 7200?Ha of land. These developments eschewed earlier modernist forms of suburbanization in favour of the perimeter block that superficially echoed the ‘traditional’ built form of the city. But the new perimeter blocks and neighbourhood design varied from their inner-city counterparts and have been the subject of near universal criticism. Some 10 years after their occupation, we reappraise the development importantly adding the perspective of residents. While many of the design failings identified in the past are confirmed, we also reveal qualities that residents value. The study demonstrates the value of post hoc evaluation after residents have settled in and leads us to argue for the importance of better integrating the everyday life (lived experience) perspective into evaluations to achieve better places.     

Axes of urban growth: urbanization and railway stations in Seoul, 1900–1945

The urban space of Seoul that had kept the structure of the Fortress and the Seongjeo Shibri for more than 500 years began to be transformed with the introduction of modern transport facilities, the railway and tram, in the early twentieth century when Seoul became the colonial capital of Gyeongsung-bu. The railway station buildings that were constructed in the main areas of Gyeongsung-bu mirrored international developments through taking charge of the city's passenger traffic and cargo distribution. They also influenced greatly the course of the city's urban growth. This article investigates the features of the urban growth of Gyeongsung-bu through looking into changes in the station buildings' role and into the construction of railways, which became the public transportation system throughout the whole Korean Peninsula.     

Reprint of “The production of segregated urban landscapes: A critical analysis of gated communities in Sofia”

Gated communities represent a rather new trend in housing in Sofia. Besides very few secluded and privately governed neighbourhoods of the nomenclature they were little known in Bulgaria before 1989. This has changed profoundly over the last 15 years. Indeed, similar to other Central and Eastern European cities (CEE) one can speak of a boom in closed-type settlements in Sofia and its outskirts with approximately 50–60 newly constructed gated and guarded housing estates which in some cases accommodate several hundred inhabitants. While this growth of enclosed high-income neighbourhoods has mostly been studied in terms of architectural design, representation, residential structure and behaviour as well as public–private dichotomy little attention has been paid to the politico-economic processes underlying this radical restructuring of urban space in Central and Eastern Europe. Additionally the role of the key stakeholders (local business people, international developers, public authorities) has hardly been questioned. Therefore, this article tries to uncover the interplay of different stakeholders that have shaped this production of space. By applying a relational approach the article attempts to elaborate on why, by whom and by what kind of practices gated communities are produced and how they function. Beyond that the article also takes a closer look at the neo-liberal urban policy environment that has influenced the rise in gated communities. The article aims not only to extend the research by adding just another case study, but rather to provide a critical reading of gated communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore by discussing three examples of gated communities in Sofia, each representing a specific type with its specific causalities and socio-spatial outcomes, the article will also highlight what we can learn from our post-socialist Bulgarian case regarding gated communities in general.     

The port–city relationships in two European inland ports: A geographical perspective on urban governance

Urban development projects involve some complex relationships between institutional public agents, who govern local territories, and economic agents, who make urban economies. These relationships between the stakeholders of the economic sectors (transport, water, housing, energy, industry…) and the territories shaped by public action thus define the type of urban governance which results from interactions. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that the relation between these stakeholders has a major impact on the mechanisms that produce the city. In this perspective, we apply an analytical framework (sector/territory dialogues) to two river cities in order to understand how the interplay between the stakeholders modifies urban geography. Analysing the relationship between the city, the river and the port in Venlo (The Netherlands) and Strasbourg (France) provides examples of project-based urban planning that is founded on negotiation between the river stakeholders (port authorities, inland waterway managers, transport and logistics firms) and the different levels of public policies (municipal, intermunicipal, regional, national levels). Eventually, this approach allows us to consider the forms taken by the above sector-territory dialogue within the urban space in terms of tools and scales. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion about the value of a contribution from geography to an understanding of these governance issues.     

Transfer of urban ideas: The emergence of Venezuelan urbanism in the proposals for 1930s’ Caracas

This article focuses on the emergence of Venezuela's modern urbanism through the proposals for 1930s’ Caracas. In an effort to combine the different discourses which underpinned the urban discipline, both technical and legal literature are reviewed. As a way of illustrating how urbanistic ideas travelled from Europe to Latin America until the early decades of this century, the article stresses the professional background of the French urbanists called to design the 1939 ‘Plan Monumental’ of Caracas. The role of the local administration in assembling the different strands which had shaped Venezuelan urbanism since the late 19th century is highlighted.     

The birth of ‘land use planning’ in American urban planning

Although the concept of ‘land use planning’ is now firmly enmeshed in American urban planning, its meaning still remains vague. This paper aims to clarify the meaning by examining the historical development of land use planning in the USA. At the beginning of the twentieth century, city planners viewed a city as an organic unit of public facilities. While city planning thereafter provided potential elements of land use planning, such as zoning, zoning surveys and land use classification systems, the idea of land use planning itself was actually derived from rural county planning and was initially utilized in urban county planning as a guide for zoning in the 1930s. After bringing about a change in the way cities were viewed, that is, as a pattern of land use and population density, land use planning was further employed as a guide for urban redevelopment policies in the 1940s, and finally reaching full integration into city planning in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Reprint of “The production of urban vacant land: Relational placemaking in Boston,MA neighborhoods”

The persistence of vacant land in urban areas exhibits geographic unevenness. While central cities have experienced waves of reinvestment over the past decades, vacant lands often persist in adjacent low-income neighborhoods. Thus a networked local-scale perspective is integral for understanding metropolitan areas. Local scale analyses require an understanding of informal decision-makers and institutions and the ways that they connect more broadly with other actors. Drawing on focus groups with civil society organizations (CSOs) and a neighborhood design/build case study, this paper characterizes “on the ground” perceptions of and responses to vacant lots in urban neighborhoods in order to provide insight into their analysis and management. The fieldwork extends insights from studies of community gardens to suggest that access to and potential ownership of vacant parcels, in addition to the political economic forces driving land-use change, are critical factors that drive vacant land governance at the neighborhood-scale. Public–civic partnerships in weak market areas have the potential to strengthen this access and ownership in a way that improves vacant lot management.     

Complexity in urban agriculture: the role of landscape typologies in promoting urban agriculture’s growth

This research identifies the potential shortcomings of local initiatives to encourage urban agriculture projects by comparing citywide efforts with existing community projects. It investigates how more effectual policy might be developed to accommodate a fuller range of urban agriculture projects, and how urban agriculture stakeholders might use clearer promotion processes to meet stated goals. It hypothesizes the important role of clear urban agriculture definitions, typologies, and links to associated benefits towards meeting the stated goals of policy-makers. Utilizing San Francisco in California as a case study, this paper investigates recent efforts at citywide urban agriculture promotion.     

The dimensions of global urban expansion: Estimates and projections for all countries, 2000–2050

Our study of the expansion of a representative sample of 30 cities showed that 28 of them expanded more than 16-fold during the twentieth century. More generally, cities are now expanding at twice their population growth rates, on average, and now cover almost 0.5% of the planet's land area. We created a new dataset comprising the universe of all 3646 named metropolitan agglomerations and cities that had populations in excess of 100,000 in the year 2000, their populations in that year, and their built-up area identified in the Mod500 map, currently the best of eight satellite-based global maps of urban land cover. Using this dataset, we estimated urban land cover in smaller cities and towns in all countries and calculated total urban land cover in every country in the year 2000. We then employed multiple regression models that could explain more than 90% of the variations in our urban land cover estimates amongst countries. Then, using U.N. urban population projections in combination with three realistic density change scenarios based on our previous global and historical study of densities, we projected urban land cover in every country and world region from 2000 to 2050. According to our medium projection, urban land cover in developing countries will increase from 300,000 km² in 2000 to 770,000 km² in 2030 and to 1,200,000 km² in 2050. Containing this expansion is likely to fail. Minimal preparations for accommodating it – realistic projection of urban land needs, the extension of metropolitan boundaries, acquiring the rights-of-way for an arterial road grid that can carry infrastructure and public transport, and the selective protection of open space from incursion by formal and informal land development – are now in order.     

The impact of immigration on interregional migrations: an input–output analysis with an application for Spain

Developed countries in general, Spain in particular, have experienced a dramatic rise in the reception of foreign workers in the last decade. Among all the economic and social effects originated by the arrivals of immigrants, the literature has paid some attention to the potential effect that this immigration can produce on the internal migration patterns (the so-called “displacement effect”). This paper proposes the use of a multi-region input–output model of migrations for measuring how the reception of immigrants in one region displaces population among all the regions included in the model. From some basic assumptions, the input–output methodology proposed describes how the arrival of one immigrant in one region i, by the dissemination of internal population from i, generates indirect effects on other region j. To illustrate the methodology proposed in the paper, an empirical application for Spain is also included.     

The Allure of the “Big Society”: Conveying Authority in an Era of Uncertainty

Abstract

The inception and roll out of the UK Government’s Big Society agenda offers an opportunity to consider the changing modalities of contemporary political engagement. Much of the critical scholarship on the Big Society views it as a rationale to legitimize both a reconfiguration of the welfare state and an austerity programme to reduce government debt. While these interpretations are helpful, they explain only partially the appeal of these agendas for politicians and their political parties. The key question explored in this article is why, despite the hostility and cynicism towards ideological projects such as Big Society, do politicians continue to identify and pursue them? I argue that the Big Society agenda is only in part a rationale for austerity and welfare reform; it also provides a discursive setting for politicians to address societal anxieties by offering a navigable route for the future. Although the Big Society agenda has been roundly derided, its Manichean morality tale offers assurance at a time when politics is being reshaped by neoliberal ideology, changing media practices and globalization processes.