New Socio-ecological Imperatives for Cities: Possibilities and Dilemmas for Australian Metropolitan Governance

This review examines two new socio-ecological imperatives that have the potential to reshape planning practice and policy: urban climate governance and governance for resilience. The roots of the new imperatives lie in international city collaborative networks funded by philanthropy organisations that operate at city scale. City networks operating at the metropolitan scale raise issues for Australian cities with distributed governance. This practice review considers the early manifestation of both imperatives in what might be termed ‘policy experiments’ in Australia’s two largest cities: the new climate governance framework emerging through the City of Sydney’s collaboration with the C40 network and the resilience regime being shaped by the City of Melbourne’s partnership with Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient 100 program. Whilst our early analysis has accentuated the positive to some degree, pointing to different, if preliminary, forms of success in both Sydney and Melbourne, the limits and frustrations that present in both contexts cannot be discounted. Urban planners in many world cities and regions will need to consider and possibly absorb these new agendas of urban climate governance and governing for resilience driven by international city collaborative networks.     

The governance of urban shrinkage in cities of post-socialist Europe: policies,strategies and actors

This paper presents results of an international comparative research project ‘Smart governance of shrinking cities in a European context’. In recent years, many European cities have experienced urban shrinkage (population decline). Whereas there has been a wealth of research into the governance of growing cities, little consideration has been given to the governance of and policy responses to shrinking cities, particularly in relation to the declining cities of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. The aim of this paper is to compare the governance responses to shrinkage in different national contexts and assess the policy responses applied. This is done through the comparison of case studies examining the governance of shrinkage in Leipzig (Germany), Bytom (Poland), Ostrava (Czechia) and Timisoara (Romania). Two different strategies have been identified. First, Leipzig – due to its inclusion in the (former Western) German welfare state – followed a reasonably holistic strategy implemented by strong public actors focused not only on economic growth, but also on tackling issues of falling housing demand and the need to strengthen the attractivity of city centre. Second, in Ostrava, Bytom and Timisoara strategies have been inspired by neoliberal thinking, denying the important role of public sector city planning and ignoring the fact of shrinkage. In these cities, the main reply to shrinkage has been to seek economic development through the attraction of private investment (especially FDI) into the cities and using pragmatically any EU structural funding.     

Challenges of governance in two cross-border city regions: ‘CENTROPE’ and the ‘EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein’

Since the 1970s, spatial planning and urban/regional development policies have increasingly paid attention to challenges of city regions. In the Austrian context, two city regions are interesting in this respect: CENTROPE and the EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein. CENTROPE is the largest city region in Austria and is located at the borders to three other European countries. Currently, four European Member States are taking part in this cross-border region (Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Czech Republic; in total eight partner regions and nine partner cities). EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein covers parts of Bavaria (two ‘Landkreise’) and parts of the federal provinces of Salzburg and Upper Austria. These are cross-border city regions, which are mainly constructed politically and have to deal with a range of governance challenges. Both city regions have developed a certain set of measures to establish city regional governance, particularly through fostering thematically oriented cooperation between different city regional actors. In this article, CENTROPE and the EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein will be analysed comparatively with regard to their efforts to establish cross-border city regional governance. The yardstick for depicting developments regarding governance is derived from the literature about governance and city regional governance as well as by a certain theoretical understanding of space. Accordingly, the article argues for defining and analysing city regions more as places of social and political conflict, as sites of actors’ interests’ formation, hence as places, which are socially produced and reproduced. Against that background, the article will mainly address the following: (1) the most evident challenges for further developing cross-border city-regional governance in both regions, (2) the differences between the two regions in terms of governance structures and (3) relation between certain spatial and governance theories to understand the making of city regions.     

Shaking for innovation: The (re)building of a (smart) city in a post disaster environment

This paper begins by exploring a smart city approach in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand, by telling the city's story so far. We take the position of critical scholars who are engaged in a live smart cities project that involves the measurement of air quality by using sensor tools. As the project is still ongoing, the final results of the work are yet to be seen, but, nonetheless worth documenting. This article is composed as an early analysis of the air quality sensing project as a framework for the larger smart city story of Christchurch. It provides an overview of the experiences and lessons learned about the implementation of new technologies in a post-disaster environment. We examine how the narrative of the smart city is constructed, with focus on the terminology used by citizens, academicians, government and corporations. We then argue that top-down technocratic solutions to urban problems alone do not suffice to improve life in the city; rather, they can result in misaligned expectations or outcomes for stakeholders at the government and citizen level. We conclude by suggesting that citizen-led initiatives may be a way to promote more nuanced and inclusive ways of addressing local urban problems in a smart cities context.     

Social Justice and the Centralisation of Governance in the Australian Metropolis: A Case Study of Melbourne

The prodigious, low-density spread of the Australian metropolis is creating communities of divergent aspirations and diminished social mobility. To a large degree, these patterns can be attributed to structural economic change, characterised by powerful centripetal tendencies within high value added, ‘knowledge-intensive’ and globally linked industries. However, reforms in metropolitan governance have also played a part. As evidenced in Melbourne, most Australian cities have seen a steady centralisation of planning, infrastructure and development facilitation functions into State Governments, the only constitutionally recognised sphere of governance in Australia besides the Commonwealth (federal) government. The upshot is that metropolitan communities effectively have no voice for their collective will. Many urban policy initiatives and investments that may have mitigated some of the socially adverse features of the modern economy have been foregone or implemented in a desultory manner. Moreover, these foregone opportunities to foster a more compact and connected metropolis have diminished human capital accumulation to the detriment of Australian productivity and competitiveness. Reinstatement of a metropolitan governance forum, with its own democratic mandate and fiscal capacity, to operate separately from, but in cooperation with, state and local governments, may be necessary if the trends in social division and lost productivity in the Australian city are to be reversed.     

The role of ethnic retailing in retrofitting suburbia: case studies from Toronto,Canada

Today’s immigrants to Canada are increasingly and directly settling into suburban areas of major cities; a trend that has resulted in new retail opportunities: suburban ethnic shopping centres are a growing phenomenon in areas with major immigrant settlement. This paper discusses the development and retrofitting processes of three suburban Chinese shopping malls in the Toronto area. The paper explores how these malls successfully regenerated areas once affected by business decline and how they can act as a catalyst to develop a new urban form that makes the suburban landscape less uniform and more sustainable. Various perspectives from key players involved in ethnic retail activities and developments were collected, including surveys with entrepreneurs and shoppers, and semi-structured interviews with city councillors, city planners, developers and an architect. The paper suggests that municipalities could invest in established ethnic retail places as an innovative means of “retrofitting suburbia.”     

Approaches to workforce housing in London and Chicago: from targeted sectors to income-based eligibility

In many cities, people with jobs essential to daily urban life—bus drivers, teachers, police, nurses and the like—cannot afford housing in proximity to their work. Municipal efforts to counter such job–housing imbalances include targeting such workers specifically or moderate-income households, more broadly, for housing support. This article investigates and assesses housing policy for modest-income workers in two cities, Chicago and London. Based on review of documents and key informant interviews, each city’s policy context, aims, means and outcomes are analyzed. Effective strategies include working with public, private and third-sector partners to find upstream cost-effective solutions, increasing shared equity/ownership products and developing mechanisms to ensure long-term affordability of workforce housing. While each city’s policies reflect local conditions, they also are indicative of broad trends in intermediate housing policy: an increase in stakeholders involved in programme administration and delivery, a continued focus on homeownership, rising income thresholds for eligibility and a shift away from targeting employment sectors.     

突发公共卫生事件引发的城市发展思考与规划应对

建设人民城市、健康城市,提升城市应对突发公共卫生事件的能力和水平,是落实以"人民为中心"发展理念的必然要求。针对新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情暴露出的城市发展问题和短板,文章提出"厘清两对关系、构建两个体系、提质四类空间"的规划思考,具体为厘清平时与疫时、城市与区域的关系,构建适应性强的公共卫生体系、现代化的城市治理体系,通过规划这一公共政策补齐"医护空间"短板、重视"社区空间"建设、发挥"蓝绿空间"功能及再现"乡村空间"活力。     

Negotiating the Global and the Local: Evaluating Development Through Public–Private Partnerships in Durban,South Africa

Within a context of transition, South African cities such as Durban are required to address the dual development imperatives of socio-economic redistribution and increasing global competitiveness. Processes associated with shifts to urban governance and partnerships are being drawn on to achieve these urban development goals. In 1999, the Durban Growth Coalition, a strategic partnership between business and government, emerged to address urban economic development concerns. The partnership has led to the successful planning and implementation of various flagship developments within the city. This paper evaluates the processes of the Coalition and associated projects in order to assess to what extent the partnership is successfully addressing the dual imperatives of post-apartheid redress and integration into the global economy. The paper thus critically examines the implications of using public–private partnerships as mechanisms for equitable development in South Africa and highlights the possibility of the emergence of deliberative processes of decision-making through partnerships.     

Does City Governance Matter for the Urban Poor?

Decentralization has focused attention on city government but, at the same time, the growth of civil society means that urban governance is not limited to city government. Little attention has been paid, either in the literature or in practice, to the institutional and political processes which determine whether and how the poor benefit, or how the poor can influence the agenda of city governance. Drawing on studies of nine cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, this paper identifies three broad areas which are of importance: a political system in which the votes of the poor count; a city government system with some capacity to deliver; and a dynamic civil society which can press the case of the poor. After reviewing what is involved in each of these areas, the paper identifies a number of specific policies and practices which impact on the urban poor.     

迈向“正气候”目标的中国城市规划建设路径图

我国的《国民经济和社会发展第十三个五年规划纲要》于2016年3月17日发布,其中应对全球气候变化内容包括具体任务如“推进工业、能源、建筑、交通等重点领域低碳发展。支持优化开发区域率先实现碳排放达到峰值。深化各类低碳试点,实施近零碳排放区示范工程”。我们要从城区空间与多元化手段整合的要求上,通过创新规划、设计、运营路径达到零碳排放的整体净效应。我们需要提出 “正气候” 的城市项目发展模式,作为未来我国城市通过城区建设更新带来的机遇,迈向零碳排放的手段。正气候发展模式一方面要求把未来新建城区的碳排放量最少化,同时也要把握城区发展和更新的机遇, 使周边地区碳排放量减低的正外部性（如城市空间（如土地-交通）结构重组、推动绿色建筑、周边社区减碳项目的投资、既有建筑节能改造、 推动市场手段与体制改革等,最后使在运营阶段达到“净负排放”整体效果。这就是“正气候”效果。 迈向正气候的城区发展模式,需要在目前我国法定城市规划与建设流程上提出创新体制,引入“场地内”与“场地外”的减缓碳排放机制, 编制正气候城区建设路径图, 在建设全生命周期内保障减碳排放目标能够被贯彻,于项目完成后在运营阶段达到正气候效果。正气候城区建设模式是我国未来迈向近零碳排放区建设的有效路径。     

芝加哥学派城市社会学观点的回顾与思考

通过对芝加哥学派城市社会学关于城市结构和城市生活的主要观点的回顾,厘清其理论的适用范围。指出在当代认识城市结构和城市生活问题所需考虑的新的因素,并特别思考了其在当代中国城市中的可用性,试图说明其形成机制的差异。     

Delivering Social Housing: Examining the Nexus between Social Housing and Democratic Planning

The construction of social housing in gentrifying neighbourhoods can ignite contestation, revealing tensions between economic imperatives, social policy and neighbourhood change. With a view to understanding how the convergence of these agendas preserve unpopular, but socially critical housing infrastructure, the aim of this paper is to explore how the challenges social housing implementation encounters across these agendas intersect with a broader agenda for local democratic planning. Using social housing as our empirical focus and directing attention to the gentrifying local government area of Port Phillip in Victoria, Australia, this paper reveals how a council’s main asset to support implementation – its policy frameworks – creates an urban narrative of social inclusivity and diversity. Through this case, we illustrate how elected officials and some residents draw from these policies to interject into episodes of community contestation, which we argue presents opportunities to expose and renew commitments to social housing over space and time.     

Smart City implementation and discourses: An integrated conceptual model. The case of Vienna

In recent years many initiatives have been developed under the Smart City label in a bid to provide a response to challenges facing cities today. The concept has evolved from a sector-based approach to a more comprehensive view that places governance and stakeholders' involvement at the core of strategies. However, Smart City implementation requires lowering the scale from the strategy to the project level. Therefore, the ability of Smart City initiatives to provide an integrated and systematic answer to urban challenges is constantly being called into question. Stakeholder involvement in both the projects and the city strategy is key to developing a governance framework that allows an integrated and comprehensive understanding. This can only be done if Smart City strategies take the stakeholders' opinion into account and seek a compromise between their views and the implementation of the strategy.Multiple attempts have been made to analyse Smart Cities, but tools are needed to understand their complexity and reflect the stakeholders' role in developing Smart City initiatives and their capacity to face urban challenges. This paper pursues two objectives: (A) to develop a conceptual model capable of displaying an overview of (a) the stakeholders taking part in the initiative in relation to (b) the projects developed and (c) the challenges they face; and (B) to use this model to synthesise the opinion of different stakeholders involved in Smart City initiatives and compare their attitudes to the key projects implemented in a corresponding SC strategy. The methodology combines project analysis with surveys and interviews with different groups of key stakeholders (governments, private companies, universities and research centres, and civil society) through text analysis. The conceptual model is developed through discussions with different European stakeholders and is applied to the case of the Vienna Smart City strategy.     

Incorporating a Systemic and Foresight Approach into Smart City Initiatives: The Case of Spanish Cities

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, cities face serious societal, economic, environmental, and governance challenges. Under the term “Smart City,” numerous technology-based initiatives are emerging to help cities face contemporary challenges while the concept itself is evolving towards a more holistic approach. Nevertheless, the capability of smart initiatives to provide an integrated vision of our cities is still very limited. Eventually, many of these initiatives do not fulfill satisfactorily their initial objectives because they fail to understand the complexity, diversity, and uncertainty that characterize contemporary cities. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to display an urban functional system, capable of interpreting the city in a more holistic way, and to incorporate foresight tools so as to formulate Smart City visions in a more participatory way with the involvement of local stakeholders.     

未来城市及其规划探索的“杭州样本”

城市发展史就是人类对未来城市持续追求的历史,尤其是百年前,为应对快速工业化、城镇化的问题而开始探索"未来城市",随后长期延续着高技术指向性的发展特征。如今面对迅猛的技术进步,技术导向的"未来城市"陷入了误区,我们当重新回归"以人为本"的价值理念,建构人、自然、科技协同的新型未来城市。进入新时代,面向生态文明建设的要求,面对世界城市发展的新趋势,中国亟需改变传统城市的发展模式,有责任、有义务向世界贡献未来城市的"中国方案"。本文以杭州"未来城市实践区"为案例,从发展路径、生活方式、空间营建、技术支撑、文化精神与善治等方面,阐述了对未来城市的理解和规划实践探索,以期对我国城市发展思路、模式、路径的转型提供启示。     

“一门式”政务改革背景下的新型城市治理信息平台研究与实现

随着新型城镇化建设的推进,城市各社会群体间利益格局不断分化,沿海发达城市中心城区的密度不断提高,公共事务不断增加,传统的城市治理模式面临着转型与变革,"一门式"政务改革开始出现,佛山市禅城区抓住了简政放权和大数据等技术革命带来的机遇,勇于突破和革新,现在禅城的创新举措已经达到国内领先水平。与此同时,在时空大数据技术的支持下,通过采集、整合城市各类要素运行数据,动态监测城市发展现状,为城市治理过程中决策制定与部门协作提供数据与技术支撑[1]。本文在梳理我国当前城市治理现状与问题的基础上,重点从总体架构、技术创新、业务应用三个核心方面分析其实际应用模式与方法,重点提出了"一门式"政务改革背景下新型城市治理信息平台的创新模式与具体应用架构[2],并深入阐述了大数据在佛山市禅城区城市治理方面的多个应用成果,以期为我国智慧化城市治理的实践工作提供理论指导与方法借鉴。     

智慧城市解读与未来城市发展的思考

随着信息时代的到来和城市问题的日益突出,智慧城市作为新的城市发展理念迅速成为当前全世界范围内城市发展与规划关注的焦点领域。本文在解读智慧城市的发展起源、内涵和特性的基础上,根据国内外智慧城市的发展态势,总结了自上而下和自下而上两种智慧城市发展模式。同时智慧城市理念的探索和实践对未来城市发展产生了意义深远的影响,对城市数据系统的整合性、城市规划的协调性、开放式数据库的建立以及对市民的参与鼓励都提出了更高的要求。然而,由于对ICT技术的依赖性,我们仍要清新认识到智慧城市发展过程仍有可能带来的问题和风险。     

城市规划管理体制如何应对全球气候变化?

城市是全球温室气体排放的重要源头,通过规划、建筑设计施工、交通、城市产业结构调整、能源供求规划等领域,城市的建设过程可以提供有效及必要的控制温室气体排放的手段。城市规划的思维也要因此而作出改变,向如何可以通过城市发展创新模式和决策,在"减缓"(mitigation)和"适应("adaptation)两大战略方向应对气候变化。本文先对全球气候变化问题,特别是其对城市发展建设带来的挑战作出表述,同时也分析了当前世界上其他城市的应对方法及手段作为参考。最后,本文建议以低碳城市为目标的整合城市规划决策体制框架,对目前传统城市规划过程作出目标及方法上的修改,以达到控制气候变化及温室气体排放的城市规划目的。