The Community is Not a Place and Why it Matters—Case Study: Green Square

Analyses of planning documents and a recent survey of practicing planners in NSW reveal that most planners treat 'the community' as a place or as place based. This usage is widespread and underpins most urban design principles and practice. The place-based approach is associated with a focus on what happens within a place, what it contains, and on built or physical infrastructure. The language is of connectivity, legibility, permeability, access, the public domain and so on. However, sociological research does not support this interpretation of community as place. Recent neighbourhood studies, for example, consistently find that social and economic networks are not primarily place based except for a small number of identifiable population groups. Meanwhile, other strands of social research have been reporting for years that what matters in terms of the health and social wellbeing of a society or a city is relativities—the comparative status between neighbourhoods, the effects of relative deprivation, the impacts of relative inequality. Treating community as place and social wellbeing as primarily place based obscures the importance of these critical factors in social wellbeing and social sustainability. Recent planning initiatives for Green Square, including the Green Square Town Centre Masterplan provide current examples. The article concludes by demonstrating that if planning were to proceed on the basis that communities of interest and attachment are more important than communities of place and that relative equality is the key to health and social wellbeing, some current planning shibboleths would need to change. But the role for planners in social sustainability would also become clearer.     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda,Melbourne

Are planners ‘dealmakers’ caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of ‘democratic planning’ where planners question what is ‘legitimate’ and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co‐opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term ‘community consultation’, if democratic planning is to be achieved.     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda, Melbourne

Are planners 'dealmakers' caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of 'democratic planning' where planners question what is 'legitimate' and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co-opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term 'community consultation', if democratic planning is to be achieved.     

不同尺度弱势群体对公园绿地潜在供给 与实际游憩服务获得的响应差异及其影响 因素

社会分层和空间异质性加剧使得弱势群体获得公园 游憩服务的公平性问题日益凸显,探究弱势群体的公园绿地潜 在供给和实际游憩服务获得的差异仍是一项重要任务。选择中 国武汉市24个具有明显社会层级和空间异质性的小区,从居住 区和个人2个尺度研究了不同弱势群体获得公园绿地潜在供给 和实际服务的公平性差异,并分析了2个尺度中弱势因素对获 得游憩服务的交互影响,以及影响游憩服务获得的主要因素。 结果显示,老旧小区的公园绿地潜在供给以及实际游憩服务与 新小区没有显著差异,但生理弱势是影响居民获得游憩服务差 异的主要因子,而不同尺度的非生理弱势因素交互则会明显削 弱居民可获得的单次游憩服务量。此外,居住区尺度小区周边 设施对居民可获得的公园游憩服务的影响大于小区内部条件和 居民个人社会经济特征。研究结果明确了城市建成环境对不同 弱势群体获得公园游憩服务的公平性影响差异,对快速城市化 地区弱势群体公平获得公园游憩服务的改善具有重要帮助     

Integrating “standard” residents into “non-standard” communities: a longitudinal analysis of social capital in a new urbanist development

This article examines how levels of social capital in a new urbanist community change over time. We collected demographic and social capital data in a new urbanist community in 2001 and then again in 2010. The findings indicate that this community experienced an overall decline in social capital over this nine-year period. Additionally, we found that while residents new to the community were less concerned with social capital than long-term residents in the community, the latter group had also declined significantly in their levels of social capital. Overall, the results suggest that planners of new urbanist and other intentional communities should consider the impact of changing demographics when designing new subdivisions. Most importantly, residents and community leaders need to consider alternative means by which social capital can be retained as new residents are integrated into established communities.     

Planning for the Disposal of the Dead

Problem: Concurrent with the dramatic increase in the nation's elderly population expected in coming decades will be a need to dispose of larger numbers of our dead. This issue has religious, cultural, and economic salience, but is not typically considered a planning problem. Although cremation rates are rising, burial is projected to remain the preferred alternative for the majority of the U.S. population, and urban space for cemeteries is limited in many communities.

Purpose: We outline issues related to cemeteries and burial, describe a number of alternatives to traditional cemeteries, and explain how planners might usefully contribute.

Methods: This work is based on a literature review.

Results and conclusions: Alternatives to the cemetery are emerging, but remain limited. Some require changes to laws or public perceptions. Planning practice could be advanced by case studies showing how to integrate burial grounds into existing communities and how to alter public policy to permit alternatives to burial.

Takeaway for practice: As population demographics change, environmental concerns intensify, and demand for urban space grows, future land use decisions will have to balance a diverse set of social, cultural, and environmental expectations, including taking into account burial practices. There are only a handful of alternatives to traditional burial in a cemetery: burial in a multiple-use cemetery; natural burial; entombment in a mausoleum; cremation, with the ashes preserved in a columbarium or scattered elsewhere; and burial in a grave that will be reused in the future. This article provides planners with information about each of these alternatives, examples of how the planning process can address disposal of the dead, suggestions for avoiding environmental externalities, and ideas for better integrating the landscapes of death into community life.

Research support: None     

Social needs of the elderly and active aging in public open spaces in urban renewal

Urban renewal districts have a relatively high concentration of elderly people. Open spaces are important for the elderly for enhancing social interaction and active aging. However, planning and design of open spaces tend to stress on the physical and safety needs of the elderly, while social needs are not frequently addressed. This study intends to identify whether the social needs of the elderly regarding the use of public open spaces in urban renewal districts are addressed in the standard planning and design guidelines which newly planned development and districts are often based upon. Eight focus groups were conducted in elderly community centers in two urban renewal districts in Hong Kong. The results indicate that elderly people consider ‘social and physical activities’, ‘community life facilities and services’ and ‘social network’, as well as a ‘clean and pleasant environment’ to be their most important needs. Thus, planners and designers should take into consideration these criteria for enhancing the social well-being of the elderly and active aging in public open spaces in urban renewal. Furthermore, it stresses that urban renewal districts are part of the elderly's past living experiences and established social networks, which is not the case in new developments and areas. As such, the users' actual needs should be elicited rather than perceived by planners and designers.     

COORDINATION OF WATER AND SEWER EXTENSION POLICY WITH LAND USE PLANNING: Key Factors Influencing the State of Practice

City planners have argued for over 20 years that water and sewer extension decisions should be coordinated with comprehensive land use and growth management plans. It is shown that a modicum of coordination, in fact, is occurring among utilities in nine southeastern states. Key factors promoting coordination include rapid population growth, a highly educated utility director, and adoption of sophisticated internal capital programming techniques. Those findings suggest that state capacity-building programs designed to improve the effectiveness of utility leadership and operations will help foster increased coordination of utility investments with community land use and growth management planning. It is found, however, that the use of special districts to provide utility services tends to stifle coordination. That finding suggests that states should take steps to discourage the use of special districts to provide services, such as water and sewerage, that strongly affect population distribution and whose provision therefore should be closely coordinated with community growth management policies.     

Community planning – from politicised places to lived spaces

Concepts such as place identity and placeof belonging play a central role in currenturban planning and urban regenerationprogrammes. The creation of a positive placeidentity and a stable and positive sense ofbelonging is seen by urban planners as animportant means to combat social and physicalproblems in deprived urban areas. The reason isthat urban planners often make a connectionbetween social and economic statistical factsand the way the residents experience theirplace of residence. The question arises whetherthe connection between facts and experiencescan effectively capture how place identity canbe understood and how it is shaped. It is alsoa question of who determines whether a placeidentity is positive or negative – theplanners or the residents?This article treats these questions first byoutlining a theoretical discussion of theconcept of place identity, and secondly bypresenting findings from a qualitative study toshow how residents create meaningful placeidentities, how they conceive of their place ofresidence, and how they use their place ineveryday life.     

北美的城市蔓延与规划对策及其启示

二战以后的城市蔓延问题 (urbansprawl或urbandisper sion)及其对社会、经济和环境的影响是北美城市规划研究的重要课题。这篇论文在西方社会发展由现代 (modern)和福特工业(Fordist)社会向后现代 (Post modern)和后福特工业 (Post fordist)社会转型的背景下分析这一城市问题的产生、发展和新的变化趋势。结合大多伦多地区(GreatTorontoArea ,GTA)案例 ,分析与描述北美城市蔓延的形成过程和城市规划的对策以及实施过程中遇到的阻碍     

Maintain,demolish, re-purpose: Policy design for vacant land management using decision models

Decline, measured in population growth rates, population levels, housing stock and economic activity, and associated increases in vacant land in urban areas, is a reality for cities and regions within the United States. However, planners increasingly see ‘decline’ as a development state to anticipate and a development strategy to consider. For example, a place may lose population while continuing to provide a high quality of life and social value. Vacant land is central to planning issues related to decline: some currently-occupied housing may likely become abandoned and demolished, yielding vacant lots, while some currently vacant lots may be inputs to alternative uses such as recreational space, urban farming or commercial uses. In this paper, we develop decision models that enable planners to generate a range of neighborhood-level development strategies that jointly optimize multiple objectives related to residential satisfaction, scale economies in development and equity. We apply these models to a case study of a small city. Model solutions may help planners understand how alternative model formulations are associated with spatial variation in active versus passive land uses, values of important output measures such as residential satisfaction, and the special role that vacant land plays in regional development policies that can be classified as smart growth or smart decline.     

US Metropolitan-area Variation in Environmental Inequality Outcomes

Over the past 20 years a steadily increasing number of researchers have investigated the relationship between neighbourhood demographic composition and environmental hazard presence. However, relatively few researchers have attempted to determine why the distribution of social groups around environmental hazards takes the form that it does or why some studies find strong evidence of environmental racial inequality while others do not. One possible explanation for this is that environmental racial inequality levels vary from one location to another. In order to see if this is the case, the article compares environmental racial inequality levels in the 61 largest metropolitan areas in the continental US, holding the unit of analysis, type of hazard, type of region and comparison population constant across metropolitan areas. Analyses demonstrate that environmental racial inequality levels do vary across metropolitan areas. Thus, after presenting these analyses, hypotheses are tested that make predictions about the determinants of this variation. These hypothesis tests show that neither residential segregation nor racial income inequality does a good job of explaining metropolitan-area variation in environmental inequality outcomes in the US.     

Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage—I. Towards New Concepts and Methods1

This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social–transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper.     

从巴赫金狂欢理论视角看城市公共空间的本质内涵* ——以重庆磁器口为例

长期以来,我国公共空间作为客观的、实体的、容纳人及其活动的物质空间属性以及视觉和审美的价值受到了学者与规划设计者更多、更广泛的重视,而其物质空间实体同抽象的社会、政治空间之间的联系却未受到同等程度的关注,造成了公共空间的社会价值、政治价值和文化价值的缺失.近十年来,对我国城市公共空间的批判性关注增多,我国公共空间的结构性矛盾日益突出,对引入更多的社会与政治范畴理念来进行公共空间研究提出了要求.本文在探讨巴赫金的狂欢理论与城市公共空间本质内涵之间联系的基础上,分析了重庆磁器口作为公共空间背后的社会生活、政治文化内涵与狂欢理论的切合性,为城市公共空间研究提供了新的视角.     

Business Activities of Not-For-Profit Organizations: Surviving the New Federalism?

All over the country community organizations are starting new community based businesses designed to fight unemployment, generate needed income, or respond to their own growth needs. This article addresses the questions of whether these new approaches can be used to plan and implement economic development efforts, what their political and ideological content is likely to be, what impact they will have on their neighborhoods, and what roles planners can play. The analysis is based on the authors' experiences as planners and technical assistants to such efforts, and on a detailed analysis of case studies.     

Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage—I. Towards New Concepts and Methods

This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social-transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper.     

Mercury vapor in residential building common areas in communities where mercury is used for cultural purposes versus a reference community

BACKGROUND: Exposure to elemental mercury (Hg0) in residential buildings can occur from accidental spills, broken objects (thermometers, fluorescent fixtures, thermostats), and deliberate introduction, one mode of which involves cultural practices by individuals who believe dispersal of mercury in a residence will bring luck, enhance health or ward off harm. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether mercury vapor levels in common areas of residential buildings is higher in a community where cultural uses are likely (study areas S1, S2) than in a reference community (C1) where cultural use is unlikely, and whether levels can serve as a signal of significant cultural mercury use. METHODS: We monitored Hg0 vapor with a portable spectrophotometer in the three communities. We randomly selected sites in S1 and C1 community, and also include sites in S2 specified by local health officials who suspected cultural mercury use. We evaluated 122 multifamily buildings and 116 outdoor locations. FINDINGS: We found >25 ng/m3 Hg0 in 14% of buildings in study areas compared to only one reference building. In the latter we identified an accidental mercury spill from a bottle that had been brought into the building. Both the mean and maximum indoor mercury vapor levels were greater in the study communities than in the reference community. In all communities, we observed mean indoor Hg0 vapor concentration greater than outdoors, although in two-thirds of buildings, indoor levels did not exceed the area-specific outdoor upper-limit concentration. CONCLUSION: After controlling for factors that might influence Hg0 vapor levels, the most plausible explanation for greater Hg0 levels in the study area is a relationship to cultural use of mercury. None of the measured levels exceeded the ATSDR minimum risk level for residences of 200 ng/m3 Hg0 although levels in living quarters might be greater than those in the common areas.     

Places that Support Human Flourishing: Lessons from Later Life

This review paper contends that by paying attention to the quality of life issues raised by older people, planners may promote better places for all. Recent research in the UK that asked older people to identify quality of life criteria revealed that health, income, social networks, community participation, information, activities, home, neighbourhood and mobility are key areas where old age can be enriched. The paper argues that of these, home, neighbourhood and mobility are paramount for four reasons. Firstly, older people are seen as situated, even fixed, in domestic environments; secondly, society has responded to later life by creating age-segregated spaces; thirdly, lessening mobility may increase the importance of the local arena and fourthly the interplay between the self and the environment underpins or undermines independence. The significance of place means that planners, even more than other professionals, need to be age aware. Drawing on recent national and international research this paper contemplates what a more age-friendly place might be like and considers how issues of age can interact with the broader planning agendas of sustainability, cohesion and liveability to create places that promote well-being for every member of the community.     

基于社交媒体数据的文化生态系统服务 供需评估与优化研究——以苏州市为例

评估文化生态系统服务(CES)在空间上的供需平衡状况是将生态系统服务与人类福祉联系起来的关键。然而其无形性特征使其在空间上难以量化，因此在生态系统服务评估中常常被人们所忽视。基于社交媒体照片，整合多源数据，利用ArcGIS和MaxEnt模型，对苏州市内审美服务、历史文化服务、休闲娱乐服务3类CES的供需平衡状况进行了制图与评估。研究表明：苏州市供需失衡特征明显，其中历史文化类CES失衡区域面积占比最大，高达48.1%，其次审美类失衡区域面积占比38.4%，而休闲娱乐类失衡区域面积占比则为37.0%。在景区尺度上通过CES供需失衡分析，依据不同的失衡类型提出旅游地的CES供需空间调配的策略，进而为景观规划设计人员与地方决策者提供可践行的指导，以实现旅游空间结构优化及区域保护与开发的协同。