Consortium Developments Ltd and the failure of ‘new country towns’ in Mrs Thatcher’s Britain

This article examines the attempt by Britain’s biggest house builders to launch a privately‐initiated programme of ‘new country towns’ during the 1980s. It was their response to the policy changes of the Thatcher governments, shrinking the state sector and deregulating private enterprise. Consortium Developments Ltd (CDL) was established in 1983, intending to develop up to 15 new country towns in the prosperous region around London, where housing demand was high but local planning very restrictive of developers. Each town would comprise around 5000 dwellings with social and physical infrastructure largely provided by CDL. The concept was a novel one in twentieth century Britain, where new settlements had been developed previously by philanthropic companies or by government agencies. Advised by planners associated with Milton Keynes, CDL effectively updated the Garden City–New Town tradition for the Thatcher era. However, despite pushing four proposals through the planning process, all failed. This largely reflected opposition of the government’s own party supporters, who did not want Thatcherism shaping their own areas. In the face of this, Thatcher’s ministers were ultimately unwilling to support CDL. Combined with the effects of the 1990s property slump, the volume builders withdrew and CDL was dissolved. Its failure partly reflects wider fracture lines in Thatcherism, compounded by the aggressive and very public campaigning style of its own operations which gave each proposal a very wide political resonance. Thatcherism gave way to a more restrictive planning climate in the 1990s. Paradoxically, a Labour government is now, from 2003, creating massive new opportunities for private house building and town development around London.     

Urban planning and the design of towns in the Middle Ages: the Earls of Devon and their ‘new towns’

This paper examines what processes might have been involved in the design and planning of new urban landscapes in the High Middle Ages. It does so by looking in detail at the morphology of a group of late twelfth century ‘new towns’ established by one particular aristocratic family in southern England. The paper seeks to encourage a move away from orthodox interpretations of medieval urban forms, and challenges the view that irregularities in plan-form signify a lack of planning.     

Shaping an urban Amazonia: ‘a planner’s nightmare’

This paper discusses the massive colonization plan and settlement scheme implemented in the early 1970s by the Brazilian government as part of the development of the Amazonian territory, and accounts for some of the reasons for its failure. Building on the notion that the Amazonian settlement scheme had taken a mid-twentieth-century private-colonization enterprise in northern-Paraná state as a planning model, this paper reveals that they were both grounded in garden-city repertoire; particularly the ideas of decentralization, satellite towns, and the marriage of town and country. However, unlike its model, the Amazonian settlement scheme failed badly. The adaptations made to the model and the innovations of the new scheme will also be identified.     

Shaping Seoul’s memories: the co-evolution of memorials,national identity,democracy and urban space in South Korea’s capital city

This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the diverse memorials erected in Seoul since 1953. It explores how these memorials have expressed shifts in national identity towards democracy since the end of dictatorship in 1987. It illustrates how commemorative intentions in this massive, rapidly-changing metropolis have intersected with other urban design aims and pressures. The analysis reveals an evolutionary progression in memorial themes, from heroic statues that re-establish roots of Korean national identity and independence, to marginal grassroots memorials and wider themed precincts that present more inclusive, democratic, complex narratives of identity and history.     

Okun’s law and urban spillovers in US unemployment

Using data for 2002–2010 from 358 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), we estimate Okun’s law which accounts for national shocks and spatial spillovers in urban areas. Our scale of measurement is changed to the state level, allowing us to capture a different source of spatial dependence on unemployment. Our main finding is that MSA-specific growth has a small effect on MSA unemployment rate, implying that in a well-integrated labor market like the USA, unemployment at an urban level is highly dependent on neighboring and national labor market conditions. Our results also show that the driving forces behind the behavior of unemployment for MSAs are different than those for states.     

Transnational urban policies: ‘relocating’ Spanish and Brazilian models of urban planning in Buenos Aires

This article examines the transnationalization of urban policies by analysing the adoption of two ‘foreign’ models of participatory urban planning in the city of Buenos Aires. Both schemes are modelled on internationally acclaimed experiments: Barcelona's Strategic Plan and Porto Alegre's Participatory Budget. In Buenos Aires, however, these policy transfers have failed to produce the remarkable results for which their Spanish and Brazilian exemplars have been internationally praised. Traditional accounts of policy transfers ponder on the institutional compatibility between imported schemes and host environments. The author argues that these works tend to overlook the significance of the stochastic conditions presiding over the adoption of particular policy models in different cities. She proposes to deviate from traditional approaches by seeking an explanation for the poor results of the schemes in Buenos Aires in (a) the contextual conditions framing their adoption in the Argentine capital, and (b) the circumstances surrounding their emergence in Barcelona and Porto Alegre.     

Between ‘Market’ and ‘Welfare’: Rent Restructuring Policy in the Housing Association Sector,England

This paper empirically evaluates the market and welfare impacts of rent restructuring policy in the housing association (RSL) sector. The focus is on the financial viability of housing associations in the north of England, the affordability problems of tenants in the south, and the changes of turnover rates of RSL tenancies that have resulted. Using data from the Regulatory and Statistical Returns and the CORE (COntinuous REcording) from 2001/02 to 2005/06, the analysis shows that the ‘market’ component of the rent formula plays a more substantial role in affecting the RSL rent levels despite the ‘welfare’ measures in the policy—the greater emphasis on local earnings, the restriction of annual rent increase and the imposition of rent ceilings. Given that social housing in England is essentially a residual mode of provision, it is argued that a more flexible approach in balancing these two conflicting principles in rent setting is needed.     

Urbanizing villages: informal morphologies in Shenzhen’s urban periphery

The phenomenon of urban villages in China has received much scholarly attention in recent years, mostly about their socio-economic aspects and its role in accommodating rural migrants. While the link between the socio-economic functioning and the morphology of urban villages has been recognized, detailed spatial research, and morphological research in particular, is limited. Morphological research has generally focused on either rural villages or centrally located urban villages and much of the peri-urbanity that constitutes the majority of informal development in China remains under-researched. This paper explores the morphologies of urbanizing villages in Shenzhen’s urban periphery, with a particular focus on the distinctions between the old village core and newly built expansions. The paper opens up a series of questions about the morphology and morphogenetic processes of these villages and establishes a framework for future enquiry. How do we understand the informalized planning mechanisms in urban villages? How do we explain the morphological variation of urban villages? Are the processes that characterize urban villages restricted to the Chinese context or is there scope for regional comparison?     

Transnational urban spaces and urban environmental reforms: analyzing Beijing’s environmental restructuring in the light of globalization

In this era of globalization, ‘transnational spaces’ are being created within urban settings, providing a direct connection between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. Corporate headquarters, hotels, shopping malls, and airports are typical examples of such spaces, which while located within an urban territory, are often conceived by foreign designers, developers, and manufacturers, as well as maintained by multinational companies and banks. Such local–global interconnection is giving urban management a new shape, as urban management practices are now frequently intertwining with global construction and property management approaches. This paper argues that, at the same time, a set of new mechanisms that may help to tackle problems related to the urban environment and infrastructure is unfolding. Starting with a conceptual discussion of the role of globalization in urban environmental restructuring, this paper subsequently explores the context of Beijing and the environmental management possibilities introduced in this city by global actors (through the examples of World Tower, IBM Tower, and ABN AMRO and ING head offices). Beijing, due to China’s recent economic opening process, provides an intriguing backcloth to demonstrate how transnational urban spaces—standing in-between the local and the global—may canalize environmental innovations from the ‘global’, putting globalization at work for a better urban environment.     

Re-examination of Zipf’s law and urban dynamic in China: a regional approach

Recent efforts have been made to interpret spatial-temporal evolution of urban system using Zipf??s law. The debates remain whether Zipf??s law holds true for large and diverse countries with long urbanization history, and how varied geographical settings with different socioeconomic conditions affect city-size distributions. This research investigates China??s urban system dynamics through expanded Zipf??s law at national and regional level. First, the paper revisits urban system dynamic theories and recent applications of Zipf??s law. The city data from 1960 to 2000 are then used to analyze rapid changes of urban systems in China through Zipf??s plots of cities over the entire nation and in six macro regions, respectively. The paper also examines top ten city rank changes nationally and regionally to examine temporal trajectories of key cities and the impacts on urban systems over space. Three types of Zipf??s law reflections are found over six China??s macro regions, based on the similarities of temporal dynamics of urban systems.     

‘Agitating people’s brains’: Noulan Cauchon and the City Scientific in Canada’s capital

Noulan Cauchon (1872–1935) was a founder of the Town Planning Institute of Canada and the Ottawa Town Planning Commission. He played a significant role in the planning of Canada’s capital city in the early twentieth century. This article traces the evolution of Cauchon’s planning ideas and their place within the Canadian planning profession, based upon his numerous public lectures, newspaper and journal articles. He was a close ally of Thomas Adams during the 1914‐26 campaign to extend town planning across Canada. Cauchon’s background as a railway engineer influenced his City Scientific approach to planning, which contrasted with the City Beautiful proposals for the capital produced for the federal government. This City Scientific approach became the dominant mode of planning in Canada after 1918. Cauchon produced a comprehensive zoning by‐law and many small‐scale planning schemes for the Ottawa area. Few of his proposals were implemented by the municipality, which deferred to the national government on most planning issues during this period. But Cauchon’s ideas influenced the early evolution of the profession in Canada and the redevelopment of the national capital after 1945.     

‘The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore’: representations of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.     

Between ‘Platial’ Imaginations and Spatial Rationalities: Navigating Justice and Law in the Low Countries

During the past two decades, landscape has frequently been conceptualized as a distancing way of seeing space. This conceptualization is normally traced back to the rise of capitalism and various modes of artistic representation, notably in the early modern Netherlands or the northern Low Countries. Yet recent scholarly interventions have asserted that landscape in the Low Countries and elsewhere in Europe was more than a distant scenery or an artistic mode of representation. Landscape also animated practices and ideologies of political representation, platial justice and custom. The platial notion of landscape and related concepts in the northern Low Countries around 1600 is focused upon, bringing out the intimate relationships between land, water and diverging ideals and practices of justice. It is argued that artistic landscape representation provided ways to reflect upon spatio-political developments in the Netherlands. Finally, there is a brief consideration of how these theoretical and historical issues resonate with modern thinking about landscape in physical planning.     

Between ‘true believers’ and operational experts: UNESCO architects and school building in post-colonial Africa

Following decolonisation in the late 1950s, Cold War competitiveness and economic globalisation prompted old and new foreign powers to invest in the development of Africa. By means of building and urban planning, they sought to transmit their specific models of modernisation to the continent. Architects from divergent contexts and backgrounds embraced this opportunity to transfer their expertise to Africa, in particular through development aid organisations. This paper will shed light on the expert(ise)s that were exported to, and generated within, Africa in the 1960s and 1970s through one particular international aid agency, namely UNESCO. The focus will be on the organisation's activity in the field of school building, a crucial sector of development in Africa following the independence of former colonies across the continent. Through this agency, a transnational network of expert-architects with highly divergent backgrounds was generated. Taking UNESCO as a starting point, we identify a number of such globally operating architects who had a crucial impact on the design and construction of educational facilities, but remain unstudied to date. By an analysis of their work the paper reveals the design knowledge that was generated and the building expertise that circulated through UNESCO in Africa, while simultaneously untangling the complex networks and mechanisms behind this unique architecture production.     

Complexity in urban agriculture: the role of landscape typologies in promoting urban agriculture’s growth

This research identifies the potential shortcomings of local initiatives to encourage urban agriculture projects by comparing citywide efforts with existing community projects. It investigates how more effectual policy might be developed to accommodate a fuller range of urban agriculture projects, and how urban agriculture stakeholders might use clearer promotion processes to meet stated goals. It hypothesizes the important role of clear urban agriculture definitions, typologies, and links to associated benefits towards meeting the stated goals of policy-makers. Utilizing San Francisco in California as a case study, this paper investigates recent efforts at citywide urban agriculture promotion.