Chengdu Urban-Rural Integration Exploration and Lessons–Book Review of Coordinating Urban and Rural Development in China: Learning from Chengdu

正Coordinating Urban and Rural Development in China:Learning from Chengdu Authors:Ye Yumin,Richard Le Gates Year:2013Publisher:Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN:9781781952023(424 pages,in English)Urban and rural integration,i.e.,how to deal with the issues of urban and rural disparities,urban and rural development,farmers,agriculture,migrant workers(or urban,industrial new immigrants),     

Responsibility for Sustainable Development in Europe: What Does It Mean for Planning Theory and Practice?

Responsibility in planning for sustainable development (SD) is little conceptualised in the planning literature. This paper sets up a theoretical framework to extend its understanding by drawing on ethics and political constructions of responsibility at their intersection with planning studies and SD debates. This is then applied to explore responsibility outlooks in planning practice in Sweden and England. It is argued that planning theory needs to further engage with the ethics of responsibility in planning but also with its politics, while the variety of responsibility landscapes in planning practice calls for a re-examination of responsibilities in planning for SD.     

Review and Exploration of the Development of Planning for the Conservation of the Famous Historical and Cultural Cities in China

To comprehend the development of the famous histori-cal and cultural cities in China and their conservation plan-ning, it is necessary to understand, first of all, the back-ground of their history and present condition. This back-ground has taken shape in the historic development of thecities and is influenced by many complicated factors of thepresent time. To discuss these factors in simple way, theycan be summarized as follows:The impact of the historical and cultural ideas;The impact of the physical and environmental condi-tion;The impact of the present socialand economicsituation.The impact of the historical and cultural ideasChina is a country with ancient civilization. TheChinese cultural has been shaped through development, in-heritance and harmony in a history of 5000 years on the ba-sis of the ancient Huaxia Culture with the Yellow River andthe Yangtse River as the main arteries.The rising of ancient cities in China can be traced backto over 3500 years ago. China is a multinational country. Int     

The Essence and Planning Compilation of “Multi-Planning System Integration”: A Case Study on Urban-Rural Integrated Planning of Dali City

As multi-planning system integration is an important approach to planning compilation and management in the new era, this paper sums up the essence of multi-planning system integration based on the analysis on the differences and similarities of various plans. In addition, it explores, from the perspective of planning compilation and implementation, a general multi-planning system integration means on the basis of spatial elements, authority management, and technical standards. It then summarizes the key outcome: one plan, database, coordination mechanism, and so on, discovering a new planning compilation and management approach for regional coordination, ecological coexistence, urban-rural interaction, and efficient resource utilization.     

“Three-Plan Integration”: Exploring the Order and Regulation Capacity of Spatial Planning

China's spatial planning system has a tradition of prioritizing vertical control over horizontal coordination, which leads to conflicts among various plans for one area. This has brought many problems to the spatial management of Chinese cities. Since socio-economic development plan, urban-rural plan, and land use plan are the three major elements of China's spatial planning system, conflicts among them can be taken as an intensified case of the system's problems, and the practice of three-plan integration should focus on bridging the gaps and solving conflicts among them, so as to eventually eliminate predicaments to China's spatial planning. Currently, due to influences of the actual law and governance systems, threeplan integration is largely a sort of government-led planning coordination dedicated to urban-rural spatial development. In the context of China's constantly deepened political and economic system reforms, three-plan integration, together with the extended multi-plan integration, will surely play an important role in the construction and exploration of China's spatial planning system.     

Policy Framework for the Development of Real Estate and the Real Estate Industry in China

Compared with the situation in other countries,therole played by China's real estate and real estate industry inincreasing municipal financial resources has the followingobviously different characteristics:In most countries,land in urban areas is privatelyowned,and so are buildings.Therefore,real estate revenuescome mainly through taxation.In China,however,urbanland as well as a greater part of the urban building stock are     

Policy Framework for the Development of Real Estate and the Real Estate Industry in China

The purpose of this article is to provide a basis foroutlining China's Policy for Real Estate and Real EstateIndustry in 90s.It starts with a review of China's policyframework in this regard,and proceeds from the stand-point of the long-term macro-development of China's na-tional economy with reference to international experience.Ef-forts were made to transcend departmental and localgovernmental self-interest and conflict,and to avoidshortsighted pursuit for quick benefits and successes.     

Innovative Practices in Large Urban Development Projects: Conflicting Frames in the Quest for “New Urbanity”

Large urban development projects are at the forefront of scholarly attention. This article aims at complementing critical analyses of urban projects from a political-economic perspective with an analysis centred on planning agency and practice. The focus is on the role of innovative planning concepts in the governance process. The question raised is: how can discourse on the urban quality of places affect collective choices in a reflective way, possibly leading to integrating private interests within ambitious public strategies?

The question is addressed by analysing planning of large urban projects as a “framing” practice, intended in a dual sense: as a practice defining arenas and forms of interaction, and as a practice conveying ideas, visions, concepts of “urbanity”. The case study presented—the Zuidas in Amsterdam—is interpreted as the scene of conflicting frames about the “public” meaning of places and as the contradictory struggle for framing collective action by means of innovative planning concepts. The analysis highlights the limits of framing approaches that do not adequately address the multiplicity of arenas and interactions involved in the governance of urban transformations.     

“Not a Lot of People Read the Stuff”: Australian Urban Research in Planning Practice

At the 2013 State of Australian Cities (SOAC) Conference, a dedicated plenary session examined the blunt prospect of “Who cares about Australian Urban Research?” One group apparently not reading, or not making extensive use of, urban research is Australian urban planners. Drawing on interviews and focus groups undertaken for a recent research project, in this paper we examine the nature of the research-practice Relationship in an Australian urban planning context. We explore the limited extent to which practitioners engage with research outputs; and the entrenched barriers to research to practice information exchange. While our interviews indicate planners are concerned about the lack of a solid research base with which to underpin many policies, assumptions and decisions; we find that time-poor professionals largely rely on popular media, industry publications and practice networks to inform decision making. Further, the political and reactive environment of planning practice means the role for evidence in consensus-driven decision-making is fraught and far from clearly defined. Ultimately the project highlights the extent to which the resources required to digest research, interpret its local significance, and apply it to practice can be underestimated.     

Contention for urban state space and the rise of society in China: A case study of “housing planting” in Hohhot

Existing literature has overemphasized the power of state in the theorization of China's urbanization and transition, and after the reform and opening-up, substantial attention has been given to the interaction between state and market. Comparatively, the role of society has been vastly underestimated. The paper selects housing planting in Hohhot to explain how local villagers contended actively with local states for and over space to increase compensation for land requisition. The contention has caused severe social conflicts, high compensation cost, and forced demolition, thereby threatening local states' land finance and development. Essentially, space has become a useful tool for citizens to preserve their interests. This implies that with the rise of society, China's urbanization is transitioning from a high-speed and low-cost stage to a high-quality and high-cost stage. Due to the changing relation between state, capital, and society, many pertinent institutions need to be adjusted as well. The paper calls for additional attention to the state-society-relation perspective when theorizing China's urban development.     

The Role of Spatial Development Frameworks in Transformation of the eThekwini Municipality,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa: Reflecting on 20 Years of Planning

In the 20 years since the advent of a democratic government in South Africa, planned expenditure on infrastructure projects by municipalities has been used in part to redress inequalities and socioeconomic distortions created by apartheid. Our purpose in this article is to assess the effectiveness of planning instruments to achieve desired transformation in the case of the eThekwini Municipality. We evaluated demographic, spatial regional economic, settlement hierarchy, accessibility and functional analysis indicators to assess the eThekwini Spatial Development Framework (SDF) as it applies to the city of Durban, making particular use of the National Population Census results for 2001 and 2011, municipal data on housing and settlement distribution, the municipal evaluation roll, the Industrial Land Study of 2014 and the Eskom household survey of 2009. These data sets were mapped using Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) GIS to analyse spatial changes over the decade from 2001 to 2011 to establish the ways and extent public investment guided by SDFs is responsive to spatial transformation imperatives. We found that, although there has been some economic and population growth, in-migration and densification of the inner city, there has been limited spatial transformation of the urban population, many communities still live in poverty, the traditional inequalities prevail and the benefits of democratic dispensation are elusive to many, despite substantial investment in infrastructure. Our analysis points to inadequacies of the planning tools and their application to spending public funds. Moreover, SDFs appear to be process and compliance-driven rather than inclusive of stakeholder concerns. We argue that they require substantial refinement to achieve the desired results.     

Changing conceptions of “mandala” in tang china: ritual and the role of images

ABSTRACT

“Changing Conceptions of ‘Mandala’ in Tang China: Ritual and the Role of Images” is concerned with the intersection of visionary experience with visual forms. The focus of the study is a Buddhist incantation, or Dhāranī, titled the Revered and Victorious Dhāranī of the Buddha's Usnīsa. This particular dhāranī was widely circulated in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907); for this reason, it may be approached as an important case study for studying the conceptualization of mandalas in China prior to their transmission to Japan in the early ninth century. Through a detailed examination of successive translations and ritual manuals associated with the Revered and Victorious Dhāranī of the Buddha's Usnīsa, different conceptions of mandalas and the roles that were played by images may be observed. This, in turn, responds to larger questions in East Asian Buddhism and studies of Buddhist art regarding the functions of painted mandalas during Buddhist rituals. Lastly, this article seeks to shed light on lesser-known aspects of esoteric Buddhist art in Asia, as the scholarship to date on Buddhist mandalas has primarily focused upon studies of Japanese and Himalayan works.     

Institution-led Urbanization:The “Third Leapfrog” of Town Development in Sunan

Based on a review on the history of urbanization in Sunan, the paper argues that Sunan has entered a new development phase of institution-led urbanization. After 30-year development since the opening and reform, there has been a remarkable development of small towns in Sunan. Some towns and townships are transforming into medium and small-sized cities and the urban-rural relationship has also fundamentally changed. In the new development phase, neither the existing administrative and fiscal systems, nor the actual institutions and policies relative to urbanization are efficient enough for further promoting the socio-economic development of this area, so institutional innovations are quite necessary. At the end, the paper puts forward certain suggestions on improving and reforming related institutions and policies for town development in Sunan.     

Comment on “Comparative study of the deformation modulus of rock mass” by Panthee et al. (2018) in the Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment -     

“They say this is a home”: the challenge of “home” in residential care settings for old and young

In this article, we want to bolster a critical discussion of how the “home” is used in research on residential care, and additionally make sense of young and old residents’ feelings of resistance, through the lens of a critical geography of home. We illustrate how the home ideal might be provocative and frustrating for the residents, although previous studies point out that the ideal is used by staff and in policy to reassure residents of a sense of belonging and mastery. Examples from interviews with young unaccompanied boys as well as older residents living in residential care have been used and the analysis resulted in two themes: “Residents’ conflicting experiences of space” (shared space, restricted space and regulated space, and “Residents’ feelings of homelessness” (transitional space and encroached space). How the residents themselves understand the space that is called their home and why their home can stir ambivalent or negative feelings of isolation, exclusion, and homelessness, is relevant in order to avoid romanticizing home. Residents’ understanding of home can be different from the staff, a reminder that home is a much more complex notion than the rosy ideal.

     

Public participation for infrastructure planning in the context of the German “Energiewende”

The German Energiewende (Energy Transition) poses major challenges to all parties involved. Public participation can contribute to the understanding of these challenges and their positive resolution. It is not suitable, however, to expect public acceptance for predetermined solutions. Participation presupposes openness about options. If this does not exist, one can resort to methods of communication that attempt to convince affected citizens of the necessity of adopting a planned measure. Yet if there is room for choosing among options, participation may create a foundation for broad acceptance of a jointly determined solution to pressing problems. Participative procedures that follow the model of analytic-deliberative discourse, by integrating scientific expertise with ethical and moral consideration, are particularly promising. A forward-looking model is drawn from the use of both online and traditional face-to-face methods of interaction, combining the advantages of both methods. An inclusive planning culture based on cooperation and integration is a promising way to achieve fair and effective implementation of the Energiewende.     

Geotechnical Solutions for Construction of the “Business Center” in Moscow

An example of a complex geotechnical solution is cited for the construction of buildings housing the Business Center in Moscow, which includes the analysis, design, and construction of a trench enclosure for the building complex, including an architectural monument with an underground level, and a newly constructed building with from two to three underground levels, as well as the church of Saint Peter and Paul on Yauze, which abuts the buildings under construction.     

The “deliberative bureaucrat”: deliberative democracy and institutional trust in the jurisdiction of the Finnish planner

This article seeks to elaborate on Forester’s notion of the planner as a “deliberative practitioner”, aiming to add sensitivity to the institutional conditions of planning, focusing especially on Finland. In terms of trust, the concept of deliberative practitioner mostly focuses on interpersonal trust as a planner’s resource in mediating particular interests. Thereby, when applied to the Finnish context, institutional trust may be undermined as a key resource for the Finnish planner’s jurisdiction, justifying his/her proactive role and authority in bringing broader concerns to the planning agenda. This undermining prevents the acknowledgement of important institutional resources that the Finnish planner has in coping with the tensions between communicative ideals and neoliberal realities. A more context-sensitive and institutionally responsive theory of communicative planning is needed to help the planning professionals and other stakeholders conceive the deliberative ideals as supportive for the planners’ institutionally strong agency. Hence, the notion of the “deliberative bureaucrat”. The article seeks to develop an outline for such a theory by drawing upon studies of legal culture, the sociology of professions, deliberative democracy theory and the concept of trust.