Equality in death: Sigurd Lewerentz and the planning of Malmö Eastern Cemetery 1916–1973

The exponential growth of industrialized cities at the turn of the twentieth century led town planners and architects in Sweden to design new cemeteries and engage in the discussion with novel approaches to commemoration. Malmö Eastern Cemetery (1916–1973) was designed by Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975) and represented an ambitious experiment: a new scale of cemetery landscape, which involved planting vegetation anew and detracted from sweeping picturesque designs. This paper analyses how Lewerentz's approach to the equality of individual tombstones affected his design of Malmö Eastern Cemetery, both in terms of burial spaces for individuals and the commemorative public realm. Based on archival research and field work, this paper delves into the interplay between the cemetery designers and the different urban planners of Malmö over a period of dramatic transformation in the eastern districts of the increasingly industrialized city. Although Lewerentz initially differentiated between tombstones, after 1922 he reconsidered his cemetery plans, setting standards that made commemoration accessible to everyone while limiting individual choices. Lewerentz's homogenizing decisions in planning Malmö cemetery provide a lens through which to examine how equality has shaped discussions around commemoration, representing ideals of societies across history and the underlying tensions between individual freedom and society.     

The necrogeography of pet memorial spaces: pets as liminal family members in contemporary japan

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how pets are included or excluded in the human necral landscapes of contemporary Japan. Their placement in mortuary spaces reflects the pets' paradoxical position as hybrids between humans and other nonhuman animals. Since the beginning of the pet boom in the 1990s, a growing number of Japanese pet owners consider their beloved pets family members during their lifetime and feel that they should hence be treated in death like a human. Paralleling changes in human mortuary practices in the modern period, many changes have occurred in mortuary practices involving pets: pets are buried and memorialized with Buddhist rituals, cremation has become the preferred method of disposal for pet bodies, funeral options have become more individualized, pet cemeteries are ubiquitous in the urban landscape, and joint human—pet burials are gaining currency. The inquiry focuses on two examples: the memorialization of pets in the home and the interment of pet cremains in cemeteries. Despite a greater sense of inclusion, contemporary mortuary practices place pets in a liminal position between animals and humans, indicating their status as marginal, temporary family members.     

绿漫生态墓园:生态墓园与景观设计随笔

通过考察和研究俄罗斯新圣女公墓、伏尔加格勒无名烈士墓园、悉尼北郊公墓、皮什卡诺夫斯基公墓、拉雪兹公墓与巴黎公社墙等五处生态墓园,认识到墓园的设计是景观设计研究中的一项重要内容,看到了目前中国的墓园建设中的生态环境的欠缺,提出树葬公墓和草坪公墓是适合我国国情的两种生态公墓的模式.     

School Siting

Problem: The United States is embarking on an unprecedented era of school construction even as debate continues over where schools should be located and how much land they should occupy.

Purpose: My three goals for this study were to trace the evolution of school siting standards, to explain the factors currently influencing school facility location decisions, and to identify what local and regional planners could contribute to school siting decisions.

Methods: I reviewed the land use planning and educational facilities literatures on school siting and conducted in-depth interviews with school facility planners from 10 counties in Maryland and northern Virginia to assess their perspectives on the school planning process.

Results and conclusions: I discovered that different groups use very different definitions of community school. Smart growth proponents advocate community schools that are small and intimately linked to neighborhoods, while school facility planners expect community schools to meet the needs of entire localities. I recommend that individual communities consider the tradeoffs associated with different school sizes and make choices that meet local preferences for locations within walking distance of students, potential for sports fields, school design, and connections to neighborhoods. State school construction and siting policies should support flexibility for localities.

Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners should work with school facility planners to conduct exercises and charettes to help each community determine how to realize its own vision of community schools.

Research support: The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported this research.     

Green Building Assessment Systems: A Framework and Comparison for Planners

Problem: Building assessment systems allow planners to examine whether buildings and developments meet sustainability goals, but no framework exists to help planners choose among them.

Purpose: This study develops a framework for planners to use in considering which building assessment system would be most appropriate for their purposes and analyzes nine such systems.

Methods: I conducted a content analysis of the system documentation for nine building assessment systems used in the United States and interviewed administrators of the systems.

Results and conclusions: Although many building assessment systems appear at first to be quite similar, they have substantial differences, and could produce significantly different results when used to implement green building programs. Among the important differences are the scales at which they consider various issues, whether or not they emphasize communication, and how they prioritize and weight concerns. I also found that most national building assessment systems lack a mechanism for adapting them to local concerns and conditions.

Takeaway for practice: While building assessment systems offer new tools to help communities meet sustainability goals, planners should consider the details of each system carefully before deciding on which to use in their communities. It would be very desirable for building assessment systems to become adaptable, so they will be more locally relevant and appropriate.

Research support: None.     

Green urban cemeteries: more than just parks

Inspired of Lefebvre’s and De Certau’s perspectives on social production of space, this study aims to explore cemeteries’ functions in urban life nowadays. Our starting point is that green urban cemeteries have two main functions: their primary purpose is as a burial ground, while their secondary function is as public spaces for reflections, recreation, and cultural encounters. We ask for whom the cemeteries are designed and managed, and in what ways they are actually used. To explore these questions, qualitative data from two cemeteries in Oslo is analyzed. Both visitors and people passing through the sites were interviewed during the summer of 2014 about their intention to be at the cemetery and their views about the place. We point to a series of positive measures rather than forbidden signs that should be instigated to help promoting the great potential green urban cemeteries have for citizens and a future sustainable city.     

Navigating Statistical Uncertainty: How Urban and Regional Planners Understand and Work With American Community Survey (ACS) Data for Guiding Policy

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The American Community Survey (ACS) is a crucial source of socio­demographic data for planners. Since ACS data are estimates rather than actual counts, they contain a degree of statistical uncertainty—referred to as margin of error (MOE)—that planners must navigate when using these data. The statistical uncertainty is magnified when one is working with data for small areas or subgroups of the population or cross-tabulating demographic characteristics. We interviewed (n = 7) and surveyed (n = 200) planners and find that many do not understand the statistical uncertainty in ACS data, find it difficult to communicate statistical uncertainty to stakeholders, and avoid reporting MOEs altogether. These practices may conflict with planners’ ethical obligations under the AICP Code of Ethics to disclose information in a clear and direct way.

Takeaway for practice: We argue that the planning academy should change its curriculum requirements and that the profession should improve professional development training to ensure planners understand data uncertainty and convey it to users. We suggest planners follow 5 guidelines when using ACS data: Report MOEs, indicate when they are not reporting MOEs, provide context for the level of statistical reliability, consider alternatives for reducing statistical uncertainty, and always conduct statistical tests when comparing ACS estimates.     

The Devil Is in the Definitions

Problem: Traditional American zoning separates land uses, yet many urbanists and contemporary planners argue that bringing mixed use back to the American city is the key to restoring its vibrancy.

Purpose: This article compares the American and the German approaches to regulating land use.

Methods: I derive my conclusions from a review of German federal and local regulatory documents, and interviews I conducted in the German city of Stuttgart.

Results and conclusions: The U.S. zoning approach assumes that each land use district is suitable for only a single type of human activity, such as residential, commercial, or industrial use; whereas in Germany the prevailing principle is that each land use district is suitable for multiple types of activity, and most districts end up in mixed uses. Thus, despite some nominal similarities in the land use categories employed in both countries, the zoning methods are in fact starkly different.

Takeaway for practice: The German zoning system, which commonly mixes the land uses, challenges deeply engrained assumptions that underlie standard U.S. zoning, and it may offer useful alternatives for zoning reform.     

From Local to Global: One Hundred Years of Neighborhood Planning

Problem: Over the past 100 years, city planners have used neighborhood planning to address a variety of vexing social problems such as community disintegration, economic marginalization, and environmental degradation. To date, there has been no comprehensive review and critique of these planning initiatives and how they have influenced the profession.

Purpose: This article traces the history of neighborhood planning in the United States to learn from past experience and to identify its contributions to the planning profession.

Methods: I review the literature on the various forms of neighborhood planning, which I define as planning initiatives that focus on altering the physical environment of one or more neighborhoods in pursuit of larger social objectives.

Results and conclusions: Each of the six forms of neighborhood planning discussed in this article has made important contributions to the planning profession. Perry's neighborhood unit formula provided planners with a template for good neighborhood design and introduced the idea that neighborhood design could affect the sense of community. Urban renewal taught the profession about the limits of physical solutions to social problems, the precious nature of neighborhood social networks and the importance of involving citizens. The community action programs created a new norm for citizen participation and showed its limits, as well as introducing truly comprehensive redevelopment planning. Community economic development showed that some planning and implementation activities can be successfully delegated to community-based organizations. Municipal neighborhood planning provided a mechanism for ongoing citizen involvement. The most recent forms of neighborhood planning create neighborhoods that encourage walking, use of mass transit, social interaction, and a sense of community.

Takeaway for practice: Neighborhood planning programs have made a number of important contributions to the planning profession, including focusing attention on how neighborhood design influences urban livability and social behaviors, institutionalizing citizen participation in plan making, and going beyond physical development to address social, economic, political, and environmental issues. Neighborhood planning is currently more important than ever, as it now addresses global issues such as energy conservation and greenhouse gas emissions in addition to its historic focus on social equity issues such as poverty and social alienation.

Research support: None.     

Deconcentrating Poverty With Housing Programs

Problem: Housing programs of the past have exacerbated the problems of concentrated poverty. Current housing programs serving very low-income households, including homebuyers as well as renters, should be examined to determine the extent to which they help households make entry into neighborhoods with low concentrations of poverty.

Purpose: This research is designed to assist planners in understanding how well various approaches to resolving housing affordability problems can facilitate the poverty deconcentration process.

Methods: Administrative data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development are used to assess the degree to which federal housing programs help lowincome homebuyers and renters locate in neighborhoods where less than 10% of the population is below poverty.

Results and conclusions: Subsidizing households ought to be more effective than subsidizing housing units at helping lowincome households locate in low-poverty areas, and whether a household rents or buys should not matter to whether a program succeeds at deconcentration of the poor. Yet, analysis of national datasets across several housing programs finds neither of the previous propositions to be true. Housing vouchers suppliedto households are not helping renters locate in low-poverty areas any more effectively than are current project-based subsidies. It also turns out that tenure matters; a disproportionately higher share of low-income homebuyers are locating in low-poverty neighborhoods than are lowincome renters.

Takeaway for practice: I recommend that housing planners seeking to make poverty deconcentration more effective use housing placement counselors, administer programs at the metropolitan scale, lease and broker market-rate housing directly, promote mixed-income LIHTC developments, practice inclusionary zoning, and monitor the impacts of these efforts.

Research support: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.     

State of the Art in Planning for College and University Campuses: Site Planning and Beyond

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Colleges and universities have been planning their campuses for centuries, yet scholars have conducted little empirical research regarding the nature of campus planning in the United States. We review recent scholarship on campus planning, discovering that it is dominated by case studies (sometimes in edited collections) and some comparative studies. In this review we organize the literature into 3 geographic scales: the campus per se (or campus park), the campus–­community interface, and the larger campus district. The literature addresses 5 topics: land use, design, sustainability, economic development, and collaboration. Most of the studies focus on research-oriented universities in metropolitan locations. The literature emphasizes how campus master planning can support student learning, how design and building guidelines can make a campus more cohesive, and how campuses are adopting sustainable development and operations. At the campus–­community interface, the research documents how some colleges and universities have expanded beyond their traditional boundaries, invested in local economic development, and worked with their communities to improve transportation and reduce environmental impacts. Studies of campus district planning emphasize community adoption of development regulations and code enforcement procedures to reduce the impact of students living in nearby neighborhoods. The literature stresses the importance of partnerships, collaboration, and enhanced communications between the university and the community.

Takeaway for practice: University planners should continue to focus on site design that reinforces student learning and environmental sustainability and on community interface planning that supports economic development and reduces environmental impacts. City planners should expand campus district planning to address a broad array of issues and opportunities. Both university and city planners should facilitate collaboration between their institutions. Scholars should study a wide range of colleges and universities, including 2-year as well as 4-year institutions and those in nonurban settings.     

Planning the Green New Deal: Climate Justice and the Politics of Sites and Scales

Abstract

Climate change and the rise of a grassroots–legislative political–environmental movement in the United States should change how urban planners think and act on spatial change and social justice. After the 2018?U.S. elections, organizing movements and progressive legislators endorsed the Green New Deal. In this Viewpoint I look at the Green New Deal’s potential implications for urban planning. I analyze it in reference to the 1930s’ New Deal inspirations and current climate and urban challenges, and illustrate the contradictions between large-scale spatial change and community-scale social justice. I explain how the imperatives of the Green New Deal, in conjunction with the shifting sites, scales, and politics of planning for climate change, should encourage planners to reframe their spaces and politics of practice toward a reconceptualized urban regional scale and a new politics of more public participation.     

No place, new places: death and its rituals in urban Asia

In many land-scarce Asian cities, planning agencies have sought to reduce space for the dead to release land for the living, encouraging conversion from burial to cremation over several decades. This has caused secular principles privileging efficient land use to conflict with symbolic values invested in burial spaces. Over time, not only has cremation become more accepted, even columbaria have become overcrowded, and new forms of burials (sea and woodland burials) have emerged. As burial methods change, so too do commemorative rituals, including new on-line and mobile phone rituals. This paper traces the ways in which physical spaces for the dead in several east Asian cities have diminished and changed over time, the growth of virtual space for them, the accompanying discourses that influence these dynamics and the new rituals that emerge concomitantly with the contraction of land space.     

Aging and Disability: Implications for the Housing Industry and Housing Policy in the United States

Problem: The elderly population of the United States is large and growing rapidly. Since disability rates increase with age, population aging will bring substantial increases in the number of disabled persons and have a significant impact on the nation's housing needs.

Purpose: We demonstrate the impact of population growth and aging on the projected number of households with at least one disabled resident and estimate the probability that a newly built single-family detached unit will have at least one disabled resident during its expected lifetime.

Methods: We calculate disability rates using two alternative measures of disability and construct projections of the number of households with at least one disabled resident. We develop and apply a technique for estimating the probability that a newly built single-family detached unit will house at least one disabled resident using data on the average lifespan of those units, the average length of residence for households occupying those units, and the projected proportion of households with at least one disabled resident.

Results and conclusions: Under our medium assumptions, we project that 21% of households will have at least one disabled resident in 2050 using our first disability measure (physical limitation) and 7% using our second (self-care limitation). We estimate that there is a 60% probability that a newly built single-family detached unit will house at least one disabled resident during its expected lifetime using our first measure, and a 25% probability using our second measure. When disabled visitors are accounted for, the probabilities rise to 91% and 53%, respectively. Given the desire of most people to live independently for as long as possible, these numbers reflect a large and growing need for housing units with features that make them accessible to disabled persons.

Takeaway for practice: The lack of accessible housing provides an opportunity for homebuilders to develop and market products that meet the needs of an aging population. In light of concerns about the civil rights of people with disabilities and the high public cost of nursing home care, housing accessibility is a critical issue for planners and policymakers as well. We believe planners should broaden their vision of the built environment to include the accessibility of the housing stock.

Research support: None.     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

Globalized Freight Transport: Intermodality,E-Commerce,Logistics and Sustainability

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Recent research reveals growing spatial disparities in warehousing-related environmental externalities, including air pollution and traffic safety concerns, across municipalities. The existing research, however, fails to present how institutional factors contribute to spatial variations. In this study, I explore how variations in planning practices contribute to the different trajectories of warehousing development. I interviewed planners, local residents, warehousing developers, and regional agency staff to identify local planning practices and policy elements that affect the location choice of warehousing facilities. My results show land use policies (land use permission, industrial zoning, and land parcel division schemes), job-related policies (job creation initiatives and job density requirements), financial incentives (tax rates and financial incentives), and environmental regulations (building design, land use buffering, and landscaping) are the major planning elements that affect warehousing development. Relative to brownfield redevelopment in the municipalities close to the urban core of a metropolitan area, developing greenfield warehousing facilities in suburban cities is likely to cause more environmental concerns in the near future. However, unmeasured factors could be responsible for some of the warehousing development patterns I find in the data.

Takeaway for practice: Knowledge, communication, and collaboration are needed to cope with the rapid growth and, in particular, the disproportionate concentration of warehousing-related environmental externalities in certain municipalities. In this study I also provide planning strategies to regulate excessive warehousing development, including land use- and job-related policies, financial incentives, and environmental regulations. With these strategies, planners in warehousing-intensive cities can determine the best way to reduce the impacts of environmental externalities on local communities in the long term.     

From the Subprime to the Exotic: Excessive Mortgage Market Risk and Foreclosures

Problem: The recent rapid growth of high-risk mortgage lending raised the financial risk profile facing not only the American homeowner but entire neighborhoods. From the perspective of planners, the problem of increased and geographically concentrated foreclosures is the most critical outcome that has resulted from high-risk mortgage markets.

Purpose: This article analyzes recent trends in mortgage finance in order to recommend what local planners can do to reduce the negative consequences of high-risk home lending for their own communities.

Methods: I plot public and private data, much of it readily available for little or no cost, to discover where in the nation recent mortgage foreclosures are concentrated, and describe how similar analysis could be used prospectively and at a local scale to anticipate future problems.

Results and conclusions: Numbers of subprime, exotic, and zero-down-payment mortgages have all been growing. Where they are spatially concentrated they are linked to rising and geographically concentrated home mortgage foreclosures. I find evidence that subprime lenders achieve greater market penetration in metropolitan areas with less educated residents, and that higher-risk lending is more prevalent where housing prices are high and increasing. I also find that when local housing markets are hot, even high levels of subprime lending are associated with only slightly higher foreclosure filing rates, but foreclosure rates rise quickly when hot markets cool.

Takeaway for practice: Although foreclosures are less likely to be a severe problem in very strong real estate markets, when prices in previously hot markets stagnate or decline, foreclosures can quickly follow. This is a serious concern given recent trends in mortgage financing that have extended credit to more economically vulnerable populations and generally weakening housing markets in many metropolitan areas. These foreclosures tend also to be spatially concentrated within metropolitan areas, particularly stressing housing markets in neighborhoods where the higher-risk products are more prevalent. I recommend that planners: (1) track local lending and foreclosure patterns; (2) promote healthier mortgage markets in vulnerable areas; (3) fund targeted foreclosure prevention and counseling; (4) develop refinancing/restructuring programs; (5) redesign programs to promote sustainable homeownership; (6) get foreclosed properties reoccupied quickly; (7) recognize the effect of foreclosure surges on rental housing markets; and (8) be proactive in policy debates on lending regulation and foreclosure processes.

Research support: None.     

School Site Selection in the Inner-City: An Evaluation of Planning Standards

Abstract

City planners constantly seek to establish ground rules for the practice of their profession. Over the years, they have developed many sets of guidelines or standards to minimize the role of intuition. This search for structure is not simply a planners' identity crisis. The attempts to establish standards have deeper roots; they stem from a desire to rationalize the process of planning. Using the example of standards for school site selection in Philadelphia's inner-city area, this article answers two questions: can standards aid planners toward rational decision-making; and how much should planners analyze and challenge the premises which are given as the basis for their decisions? The article then suggests possible ways to increase the effectiveness of planners in the area of public facilities location in general, and school site selection in particular.

Finally, it discusses the functions which standards should perform and the way they can be defined operationally. The use of standards for evaluation of sites is not sufficient in itself, however; it is only part of a more general analysis of alternative solutions. Procedural steps for such an analysis are outlined.     

Go Public!

Problem: While mortgage foreclosures are devastating communities across the United States, few planners know how to access the data necessary to document the number of foreclosures, where they are located, how the problem has changed over time, or how many households are affected, in order to assess how foreclosures affect borrowers, renters, and communities. There is no national dataset with foreclosure information, and in many communities, this information is buried in county property records, state legal files, and property auction lists.

Purpose: This article explains foreclosure as a process and describes how to use publicly available data to study foreclosure and inform outreach efforts. It shows how a collaborative effort among researchers and practitioners can produce useful data and analysis to reduce incidences of foreclosure. It concludes with suggestions for improving data access and quality.

Methods: The main foreclosure data used in the illustrative examples in this article were gathered from foreclosure court records and enhanced with data from property sales and tax records, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and foreclosure sale records.

Results and conclusions: Although records on property foreclosures, real estate owned properties, and loan servicers are publicly available, accessing them, combining information from different records, and correcting mistakes to make them useful for analysis is time consuming and costly. Teams of researchers, public officials, and non-profits in a number of places, including one involving the author, have collaborated to build local foreclosure datasets using public data, producing accurate, property-level data that planners can use to guide policy, target direct outreach to at-risk borrowers and renters, and purchase distressed properties.

Takeaway for practice: Public entities hold some of the best data available on the foreclosure crisis but, in most places, accessing it involves considerable time, effort, and money. When researchers and practitioners work collaboratively to access and analyze these data their joint efforts can transform data-sharing practices and institutions, facilitating wider access and use in the future.

Research support: This research was supported by the Fund for New Jersey, NeighborWorks America, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Michael J. and Susan Angelides Public Policy Research Fund, the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, Essex County, Hudson County/Jersey City, and Union County.