Historic Infrastructure Left Behind: Should Urban Planners Protect Streets and Blocks?

`Abstract

The disappearance of historic buildings can tear at the emotions of neighbors and advocates, yet the disruption of a historic urban plan is rarely noted or mourned and does not receive the attention from planners that it deserves. Just as they stay aware of important buildings, preservationists and planners should take up the street and lot patterns as a cause to preserve because it provides a protective infrastructure for historic character and buildings. The urban plan, laid down as the place was founded, is not only an important historic resource in its own right but also a framework for change and a safeguard for the character of a place and its historic buildings.     

How to Implement Urban Design in China?

With the focus on urban design projects for key urban areas, this paper reviews the evolution and practice of urban design in the United States, and analyzes two different development paths of urban design in China. By comparing specific urban design projects, it expounds similarities and differences between detailed control planning and urban design, hence putting forward recommendations for urban design implementation in terms of statutory status, implementation rules, and team building. The paper intends to clarify the stratified relationship between urban and rural planning and urban design, so as to avoid needless repetition and overlap of design, thereby enhancing the healthy development of the urban design discipline in China.     

Our Urban Environment: From Meanness to Meaning?

I write from the perspective of NSW, a state which has an enviably impressive Planning and Environment Assessment Act, and accompanying Heritage legislation. Despite this preventive medicine of legislation, to guard the environmental health of the state, it remains chronically unhealthy and with a condition of planning malaise apparent, to a greater or lesser extent, in all other states too.     

Neglecting The Basics? Finding For Urban Research In Australia

The idea for this seminar arose out of conversations Andrew Beer and I have had over the past two years about current trends in funding for urban research in Australia. Typically in these conversations, I would mention some concerns I had about the direction in which things were going. Andrew would then counter my concerns with some more positive interpretations and views of his own about what was happening. Put like that, the scene sounds uncomfortably familiar: ageing dinosaur, unable to move with the times, meets Young Turk, eager to seize the future. And perhaps it is. But I think in fact we saw enough in one another's views to make the difference between us one of degree rather than being absolute (perhaps middle-aged dinosaur, still moving a bit, meets youngish Turk). We certainly agreed that the issues were significant enough to be worth airing more widely and formally. Hence this seminar.     

Why do Displaced Residents Move to Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods?

Urban restructuring—the large-scale demolition of low-rent dwellings, followed by the construction of more upmarket alternatives—forces residents to make a step in their housing career. Because displaced residents tend to have a low socioeconomic position, they are often confined to the most affordable parts of the housing stock. Since these dwellings are generally concentrated in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, displaced residents are likely to move to such neighbourhoods. However, they do have a measure of freedom to choose their new neighbourhood. This article reveals which kinds of households move to disadvantaged neighbourhoods and why they do so. An analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected in five Dutch cities shows that not only displaced households' restrictions but also their preferences are crucial to understand their relocation choices.     

Housing Affordability in Singapore: Can We Move from Public to Private Housing?

With 84 per cent of the Singapore resident population housed in public housing, the ultimate dream for many is to move into private housing, which is generally considered to offer better quality and more exclusive living. This article is concerned with the enabling factors of affordability in housing mobility. It examines the Singapore public housing homeowners' affordability of private housing, suggesting a measure of that affordability. The survey findings indicate that only a small percentage of public homeowners can afford to move to median-priced private apartments. The number is even smaller for the relatively more expensive landed housing with own garden. On a theoretical level, the study demonstrates that the use of multiple methods to measure housing affordability is beneficial as more affordability determinants are included in the measurement.     

‘Dig In’ to Social Capital: Community Gardens as Mechanisms for Growing Urban Social Connectedness

This article reports on research undertaken with members of a Melbourne urban community garden to explore the extent to which such a natural amenity provides opportunities for enhancing social capital. It is apparent even from this small qualitative study that membership of ‘Dig In’ community garden offers many benefits to its members. These benefits include increased social cohesion (the sharing of values enabling identification of common aims and the sharing of codes of behaviour governing relationships), social support (having people to turn to in times of crisis) and social connections (the development of social bonds and networks). However, the study indicates that, at least in the early stages of development, such benefits do not necessarily extend beyond the garden setting. This raises a question about the time required to develop high levels of social capital, and points to the need for further research into ‘time’ and ‘space’ aspects of community gardens.     

Spatial Assimilation in Denmark? Why do Immigrants Move to and from Multi-ethnic Neighbourhoods?

In most European countries ethnic minorities have had a tendency to settle in certain parts of cities—and often in social housing—together with other immigrants in so-called multi-ethnic neighbourhoods. An explanation for this could be low income combined with lack of knowledge of the housing market and discrimination, which limits the housing possibilities for ethnic minorities. Another explanation could be that for different reasons immigrants choose to settle in so-called ethnic enclaves where they can find an ethnic social network, which can support them in their new country. In traditional research literature about immigration it has been shown that for many immigrants living in enclaves has been a temporary situation. The ‘spatial assimilation theory’ says that this situation ends when the family has become more integrated in the new society and then moves to another part of the city. This paper provides evidence to support both explanations of why ethnic minorities move to and from multi-ethnic neighbourhoods.     

Nearby Nature and Experiential Farming: How are their Roles Perceived within the Rural–Urban Fringe?

This paper presents the preferences of residents towards green areas and, in particular, for agricultural environments in Vantaa City, southern Finland. The study area includes three growing suburbs and farming land immediately adjacent to the city centre. During the study period, new residential areas in the fringe area, combined with a simultaneous build-up of the road network, resulted in fragmentation and increased land use diversity. We found that the farming land at the fringe of the city had a greater recreational role than its basic function linked to either food or fodder production. Visual mapping of pleasant places proved the importance of public traditional farms and that preserved nature areas were preferred more than constructed parks for residents living in the urban fringe. This suggests that an emphasis in careful urban land use policy might be placed more upon the maintenance of natural areas that remain unchanged.     

Housing Associations in the Republic of Ireland: Can They Respond to the Government's Challenge for Major Expansion?

In the late 1990s, faced with rapid escalation in house prices and rising housing stress, politicians and policy-makers in the Republic of Ireland expressed widespread concern about inadequacies in social housing provision. In one of a series of responses the government has recently announced an ambitious plan to promote and to resource the existing small housing association movement so that its annual output would increase eightfold in the early years of the new century. There is little existing research on the work of housing associations in the Republic of Ireland or about their contribution to housing provision and policy and there is clearly an urgent need for a careful analysis of the capacity of the voluntary sector and of its strengths, weaknesses and potential. Pending such a study, this paper aims to provide an overview of the voluntary sector's development in the context of the evolution of Irish housing policy and considers some of the developmental and policy issues which will arise from the government's decision to promote the voluntary and co-operative sector.     

A Midterm Report: Will Habitat III Make a Difference to the World's Urban Development?

In an exploration of the potential impact of Habitat III, the all–United Nations (U.N.) conference that meets every 20 years, I suggest that, in addition to government commitments, clear messaging and strong civic engagement are essential to its success. The basis for these critical elements is already in play, but is it strong enough? In answering this question, I discuss the treatment of cities and human settlements within the U.N. system, the legacies shaping the conference, and the views on sustainable urban development being put forth in its outcome document, the New Urban Agenda (NUA), arguing that the current draft NUA differs from its predecessors, leaving room for strengthening the required advocacy. I conclude with a short challenge to city and regional planners worldwide to become advocates.     

Electricity inequality in Canada: Should pricing reforms eliminate subsidies to encourage efficient usage?

Using household expenditure data from 10,811 Canadian families, this research analyses consumption of electricity, natural gas, and other fuels to investigate the extent to which higher income families have higher energy consumption. Lorenz curves show that although inequality in electricity consumption exists, its distribution is fairer than income distribution. Knowing that electricity is fairly accessible in Canada, high electricity consumption raises environmental issues. This paper discusses how different pricing in provinces results in different consumption levels when weather and environmental conditions are comparable. It means that in a subsidized electricity market, the high-income families use more energy resources, which can be considered as a “second order” inequality in provinces with lower prices due to market structures and effective subsidies based on access to low-cost hydropower. To address this issue, the paper suggests that local governments move toward an integrated market-based pricing structure that includes royalties on public natural resources to encourage efficient energy usage.     

Incentives for Combined Heat and Power plants: How to increase societal benefits?

Investments in new combined heat-and-power (CHP) facilities have fallen short of harnessing what is believed to be CHP's full achievable economic potential and attenuate societal benefits of reducing emissions and increasing resiliency of the power system. Various reasons have been found to explain this “CHP gap,” an example of the “energy-efficiency gap.” This paper examines the effects of understated capital costs and low and volatile CHP capacity factors, which historically are demonstrated by a large number of existing US units, on the economics of CHP facilities and thereby provide a possible explanation for the CHP gap. Given the probability distribution of profitability for a CHP plant, an incentive structure that is modeled similar to insurance against risk of unfavorable outcomes, might compare favorably to the present one-time upfront capital incentive model for attracting new investments. We recommend further research on assurance-based incentives for CHP projects.