Shan-shui myth and history: the locally planned process of combining the ancient city and West Lake in Hangzhou, 1896–1927

In early modern China, several modern construction plans were carried out in Hangzhou's ancient city centre and West Lake, leading to the formation of a lake-city combined urban form, which is now valued for its uniqueness and characteristically Chinese cityscape aesthetic. The catalyst for this process of combining the ancient city and West Lake was a plan titled ‘Building a New Market’ (1914), developed on the basis of a draft presented in the Zhejiang provincial assembly during the late Qing Dynasty, striving for urban renewal by promoting West Lake. After the Xinhai Revolution, seizing the opportunity of physical and temporal changes, local officials successfully implemented this plan by using pioneering planning methods to strengthen the link between the ancient city and West Lake. The steps of this plan's implementation, namely ‘pull down the city wall – build roads – construct new market’, widely influenced other cities in the early 1920s. Also, this plan led to two subsequent projects, the Circling Road plan (1920) and West Lake Expo (1922/1927), furthering the urbanization reform of West Lake aimed at making it part of the city.     

On urban sprawl: Closed city,open city or does it even matter?

The empirical urban sprawl literature uses the closed city urban model in which population and income are exogenous. This paper considers the open city model with endogenous population and income as an alternative. The tests for single-county urbanized areas over 1970–2010 support the open over closed city models. While point estimates differ for open city instrumental variable (IV) models when compared with closed city OLS counterparts, the open city models offer broad empirical support for the underlying neoclassical urban land use theory. In that regard, support for the theory found in the existing empirical literature using closed city models is not likely to diminish when using empirically preferred open city models.     

‘Must our cities remain ugly?’ – America's urban crisis and the European city: transatlantic perspectives on urban development, 1945–1970

This article explores the changing modes and mechanisms of the transatlantic dialogue between urban planners from the perspective of US urbanists. During the early post-war period, this dialogue intensified quickly. US planners were involved in their country's broad efforts to provide assistance to and build strong political ties with Western European nations. Accordingly, they assumed the role of tutors vis-à-vis their European peers. Due to urban America's apparent flaws and the success of European planning projects, however, their interest in Europe broadened considerably during the 1950s. Initially, the initiative of individuals remained crucial for the flow of planning information from Europe to the USA, and European immigrants and émigrés helped facilitate transatlantic transfers. Looking at Europe, American planners sought to address the shortcomings of the domestic practice of planning as they perceived them. Europe served as an argumentative tool for US experts who were eager to change the socio-political framework that limited their impact on urban development in their home country. Information about European planning was transmitted through a diverse set of channels and the biographies of many of the experts involved with transatlantic exchange remind us of the complex international planning networks that existed throughout the twentieth century. American planners' interest in Europe remained biased towards specific regions and topics. Nevertheless, US planners negotiated the way in which they brought their limited influence to bear on American urban environments in a transnational context. The framework that supported their integration into international planning discussions became increasingly institutionalized towards the end of the research period.     

Reproducing the city? Heritage and Eigenlogik

The aim of this study is to explore the potential usefulness as well as the limitations of the paradigm of Eigenlogik for heritage studies. The contention is that Eigenlogik, understood as a lasting operative praxis that is locally specific and unconsciously implicit in all actions, should also be traceable in those practices and processes of negotiation that select, fashion and interpret monuments. Indeed, the example of medieval monuments in German cities shows that different communities attribute very different kinds of meaning to their built heritage; these observations in turn suggest that long-term, locally specific processes of meaning attribution and negotiation are in operation. Furthermore, it is argued that built heritage functions as an amplifier of Eigenlogik in as much as the monument embodies a particular structural form of self-reference, a locally specific mode of the reproduction of meaning that remains consistent through all ‘makings’ of it.     

The city of corpses? Contested urban identity and the stigma of crime in Adelaide,South Australia

Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, has long been referred to as the City of Churches. This moniker denotes Adelaide to be a city of pious refinement and conservatism. Indeed, Adelaide’s landscape is replete with numerous and very beautiful churches. However, urban identities are more complex than simple landscape reflections and are constructed, contested and re-contested by actors both internal and external to a given place. Indicative of this is the alternate moniker for Adelaide as the City of Corpses. The origins of this alternate place identity lie in a series of violent crimes, serial killings and unexplained disappearances over a span of some 40 years. These crimes are said to have shocked Australia and, combined, have come to be construed as ‘signals’ that beneath Adelaide’s genteel surface something sinister lurks.     

“Glocalising” urban landscapes: Athens and the 2004 olympics

This paper deals with transformations of urban landscape in the era of globalization. First, it attempts to describe and understand how particular aspects of urban morphology, such as built heritage and innovative design of space, have become the competitive edge in terms of landscape. Second, it develops the argument that on the basis of their great potential for (a) promoting economic growth and (b) enhancing place identity of cities, both built heritage and innovative design of space appear to be expansively used as major components of contemporary strategic plans of cities for the transformation and improvement of urban landscape. Combining and promoting built heritage and innovative design of space as two central themes in urban landscape transformations generates, for the 21st century city, a new landscape collage dominated by two extremes: (a) that of tradition with rather local spatial references and (b) that of innovation having more universal or global spatial references. Thus, under the forces of globalization, the new emerging urban landscapes may be termed as “glocalised” ones. As a case study, Athens and the landscape transformations for Olympic Games 2004 are analysed.     

The city as terra incognita: Charles Booth's poverty survey and the people of London, 1886–1891*

Charles Booth's great survey of London poverty has not received full recognition as an early scientific inquiry. In defining and identifying social classes, and locating them spatially, across the world's largest city, it broke new ground. The methods of representation used by Booth, in charts, tables and maps, also went beyond anything previously undertaken by social scientists anywhere in the world. Behind this methodology, however, lay assumptions about poverty, work, crime and morality which largely determined the scientific results.     

Property titles and the urban poor: from informality to displacement?

An extensive literature opposes the provision of property titles for the residents of informal settlements. One concern is that titling leads to commodification and the market-driven displacement of the original inhabitants. Another is that it propagates the ideology of private ownership, undermines collective solidarity and demobilises social movements. This article, based on observations from Mexico City and Guadalajara, finds little evidence of displacement but highlights the importance of location. It supports the view that formalisation undermines resistance, but argues that titling does so by meeting rather than creating the desire of the urban poor for private property and homeownership.     

By invitation only: uses and users of the ‘entrepreneurial city’

Large-scale urban development projects (LSUDPs) are embodying the diffusion of an entrepreneurial approach into urban policy and consequently to planning, with the built environment being transformed into spaces oriented towards specific users and uses. For planning practice, this entails including urban forms and discourses that support exclusion and polarization in planning projects. This paper asks how physical planning promotes and/or hinders spatial and socio-economic integration in these projects. The analysis focuses on two UDPs in Malmö, Sweden. Official planning documents, interviews with public officials and the media are used to illustrate the discourses and practices built around these projects to glance over aspects of equity and integration in a city that is plagued by socio-economic and spatial segregation. The paper contributes to the discussions on implications and dilemmas for physical planning derived from the adoption of entrepreneurial approaches in urban policy.