2017 Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon 11-14th July
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Publication Open Access Developing an analysis framework of urban morphology study(AESOP, 2017) Xuanzi, WeiUrban morphology is the study of the city as human habitat (Whitehand, 2007). Its study is characterized by diverse perspectives. The primary concern of urban morphology is urban form. The spatial layout is the realistic dimension of urban form, and is the tangible results of the social and economic transformation. To understand how the urban form overlap and fit into each other is of crucial importance (Whitehand, 2007). Thus how to deconstruct the urban form into the elements and to explore the relationships between the elements will serve to understand the mosaic of urban form.Publication Open Access 'Decision not to decide': a new challenge for planning(AESOP, 2017) Flint Ashery, ShlomitUrban planning developed during the twentieth century under conditions of strong national welfare states and relatively weak civil societies (Davies, 2001). The need to protect the public interest and guarantee its rights led to the establishment of hierarchical planning systems throughout the developed world. Planning mechanisms were designed to guarantee equal allocation of resources and appropriate infrastructure for various sectors (Dean, 2011, Piketty, 2014). In the urban realm in recent years, the unprecedented scale of urban transformation and the weakening of the social, economic, and political frameworks that constitute the background for planning, has meant that the impact and the pressure of direct cooperation of interest groups on urban space has considerably increased (Alexander, 2002; Kolossov, 2005). Planners and politicians have to cope with interest groups characterised by diverse institutional structures, access to resources, and inconsistent territorial interests; a particular challenge to the planning system is posed by groups committed to non-liberal values and concepts.Publication Open Access From diversity and hybridity to equality and uniformity in implementation of regional planning strategies, RPS, in Norway(AESOP, 2017) Higdem, Ulla; Hagen, AkselThis paper is built on institutional theory and strategic planning theory, in order to grasp the two main questions: (1) How is the Regional Planning Strategy (RPS) as a new tool in the Planning and Building Act (PBA) understood and implemented in practice, and consequently how is this implementation to be understood as an institutional change of the regional planning system? (2) How is the strategic orientation understood and implemented? Strategic regional planning is institutionalized into the Norwegian planning system in a new two-step model: (a) regional planning strategy (RPS) and (b) various types of regional (strategic) planning tailored to each individual regional challenge. The basis for our analysis is a study of the implementation of the RPS in all Norwegian counties. We find that the translation, contextualization and re-contextualization of the PBA regarding how to implement the RPS is clearly diverse in 2011/12, the first time they make such documents. Even a hierarchical mode of implementation of a new element in the PBA seems to enjoy great freedom in terms of translation and re-contextualization between tiers. The implementation praxis of both central and regional government level contributes to the hybridity of the planning system by (a) the already established side-by side logics of negotiated policy development in a networked governance system and a planning authority and government logic of decision-making, and (b) by the main re-contextualization of the RPS from a planning strategy to a plan. However, the second time, in the beginning of the next election period, the variation has disappeared. The professional and political ambition or competence to oppose, to choose their own way to make RPS, seems to have disappeared.Publication Open Access Planning theory in the global south: circulating travelling models from the north or hybrid arrangements?(AESOP, 2017) Scholz, WolfgangThe influence of inherited “Western” urban planning models and paradigm for African cities is not yet fully covered in discussions on planning theory. Research has mainly focussed so far on the colonial legacies in Africa, including housing policies and infrastructure systems. The “improvement in sanitary conditions for the white population” (Mabogunje, 1992) and the “segregation according to race” were key elements of colonial planning (Alexander, 1983) and were translated into colonial urban planning laws and urban planning instruments. These are still visible today in post-colonial legislations. For example, the zoning model and separated land uses categories are still the foundation of most planning legislation of the former British colonies (Watson, 2009). Furthermore, “planning education in Africa is firmly ensconced in the traditions and models of Europe” reflecting planning approaches as “colonial-type master planning systems” (AAPS, 2010). These approaches seem to have failed since African cities mainly develop outside formal planning procedures and statutory land use regulations (cf. Watson, 2003; Harrison, 2006).Publication Open Access Anthropophagy in planning: building a theory from the south through : An association of actor- network theory and historical materialism(AESOP, 2017) Melgaço, Lorena; Baltazar, Ana PaulaThe tacit understanding of a singular path to development still permeates the practice of urban planning in both Global South and North, ignoring “the world epistemological diversity [and] the conflictual plurality of the knowledges that inform social practices” (Santos et al., 2004, p. 19). Even when the interest to situate the local within a globalised world is identified, there is little research that investigates local networks, reflecting what Souza (2011) describes as ‘knocking on the doors, but not entering the houses’, as researchers do not delve into the everyday. Even still, when research does investigate the everyday, the natural step is to appropriate EuroAmerican (that is, central) theoretical frameworks to deal with peripheries, disregarding particular socio-spatial features of local practices. So, the tooling is usually inadequate and out of context reflecting a hegemonic ‘central’ process that packs places full of singularities in the category ‘the periphery’.Publication Open Access The return of public planning in a post-postpolitical Memphis(AESOP, 2017) Saija, LauraIn the US Old South, a context that is characterized by major social and racial gaps and the worship of individual freedoms, planning has always faced significant challenges. Especially in the last couple of decades, the growth of electoral consensus in favor of a political establishment that is clearly against the very existence of any form of public spatial planning – perceived as an unbearable interference with the freedom to dispose of private property by legitimate owners – has favored the establishment of neoliberal planning methods and contents. This is true also for the southern city of Memphis, west Tennessee, the ‘northern capital’ of the Delta region, whose history has been shaped by king Cotton. However, in Memphis, that in many ways represents the full accomplishment of what in the literature is defined as a post-political city, i. e. the substantial death of a political debate able to reflect social conflicts together with basic forms of public welfares, few signs of interest in traditional forms of planning, i. e. an effort by public institutions to govern spatial dynamics in the name of the ‘public interest,’ are appearing. Surprisingly, the very actors that have played a major role on the post-political stage, are today taking a stand against the lack of rules and boundaries for individual and corporate freedom in the real estate sector. This paper discusses the nature of this emerging paradox, presenting the very first outcomes of a case-study research project, carried out by the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP) at the University of Memphis, TN, with the purpose of contributing to the planning theory debate on possibilities of planning resistance and/or renaissance in the face of neoliberal challenges.Publication Open Access Conformance vs performance : Zoning of the urban agricultural zones in Taiwan(AESOP, 2017) Yu-Wen, Chen; Tzu-Yuan, ChaoUrban planning is the result of political decision-making, but planning methods or tools cannot act as a panacea for problems in the city of globalisation and urbanisation. In general spatial planning theory, there is two type of planning, conformance-based planning, and performance-based planning. According to Umberto (2008), these two planning models relate to respective cultural assumptions and technical procedures finally producing, in virtue of their juridical effects, different operational consequences on spatial development and on territorial governance. In conforming planning, a normative prescription or standard will be established, end up generating project plans that focus on the adoption of the project. Although material effects of the plan easily to be evaluated, the initial plans may be misread or interpreted in unexpected ways and result in otherwise outcomes. In performing planning, the planner will propose a vision of future spatial development and make future open, then strategic plans produced in the dynamic negotiation of decision making. That make the objectives of the plans remain flexibility but the effects hard to be evaluated (Faludi, 2000; Umberto, 2008). The former was widespread in almost all European countries and the United States, and the latter can be seen in Dutch and United Kingdom, now being increasingly practised across EuropePublication Open Access Deciphering planning concepts from a perspective of Lacan’s four discourses - a case study of urban village in British planning policy(AESOP, 2017) Wang, ChuanWith the explosion of available information in the contemporary age, numerous new planning concepts are being invented in pursuit of better urban environments. When we read books about future cities, listen to the speeches of renowned architects and urbanists, browse edge-cutting urban design projects or audit discussion of urban development, countless new concepts pop up in texts along with models, drawings and videos such as eco-village, smart city and numerous -isms. Many concepts in planning are notoriously difficult to define. If we are asked to give a definition of smart city, the answers are often curtailed to individual perception. What is the ‘smartness’ of cities? Optimal transport, efficient energy consumption, data networking, social networking or even all the above-mentioned characteristics? Many planning scholars and practitioners doubt the validity and effectiveness of some planning concepts, such as public interest (Campbell & Marshall, 2002), smart growth (Downs, 2005) and sustainable development (Marcuse, 1998). It raises a question for this research: how much can contested planning concepts influence urban planning policies and future urban development? This paper tries to open up a new perspective to view this question with the help of Lacan’s Four Discourses theory, focusing on a particular planning concept – urban village - in the context of British planning policies.Publication Open Access Planning for creating a peace park; Peace park between Turkey and Georgia as case study(AESOP, 2017) Pouya, Sahar; Demires Ozkul, BasakThere are a whole host of environmental issues for biota along the political borders. Many international borders, not only appear on maps, but are bounded by fences or other obstacles that fragment landscapes and ecosystems. More or less, many international borders have been caused ecological issues including biodiversity reduction; the fragmentation of habitat (particularly for endangered animals which both require wide open spaces to survive and maintain gene pool diversity); habitat destruction through land filling and extensive service roads and invasive vehicular patrolling (Cunningham, 2012). In these situations removal of border obstacles and creation of designated corridors to facilitate animal movement has sometimes proven to be a worthwhile solution. However, cross border conservation solutions have been used more. Typically solutions like this are called Transboundary Conservation Areas (TBCA’s) which is also known as peace park.Publication Open Access Тhe praxis of creating leitbilder (guiding visions) for spatial planning projects in metropolitan Zurich(AESOP, 2017) Martinez-Cañavate, CelinaWhen we think about the future, we automatically conjure up images in our minds. These images can and will shape our future actions. Visions of the future are closely linked to the particular ideals held by each individual and must be seen as closely linked to the associated current technological possibilities (Foraita 2013). Visions of the future also arise with respect to the spatial development of regions and cities. Since the 1950s, visions of how cities and regions should further evolve have increasingly been defined by public-sector experts on architecture and spatial planning, and then documented in so-called Leitbilder (Giesel 2007).Publication Open Access Urban regeneration and its role on market sustainability: A case study of Manchester(AESOP, 2017) Lo, Chien-LingThe role of planning policies in the property market, particularly in regeneration, has been recognised as to shape, regulate and stimulate the market (Adams et al, 2010 & 2015; Jones, 2014). These scholars pointed out the lack of market indicators to evaluate the outcomes of planning and regeneration policies, which shows that the need for regeneration policies to engage with property market still remains neglected and there was little discussion on whether urban regeneration policies encouraged sustainable property markets as important economic institutions. This paper intends to explore the impact of regeneration policies on the evolution of property market toward a more sustainable level against the conceptual framework with three evaluation indicators identified in this research including market maturity, competitiveness and resilience by looking at how Manchester has been transformed through its regeneration schemes over the past few decades with the effort of all stakeholders and particularly the Manchester City Council by interviewing the council’s leaders and planning officers. Moreover, this paper looks at the feedback and opinions from the developers and planning consultants and the others who have experiences in working with the Manchester City Council for their development proposals to find out what made this city commercially successful and whether it really has profoundly regenerated the city through numerous property developments.Publication Open Access Critical distance in urban planning. Will smart, sustainable and resilient narratives save our cities? Insights from Delhi metropolitan area(AESOP, 2017) Santos, Sebastião; Ferreiro, Maria de Fátima; Sousa, CristinaNew Delhi is the second largest megacity in the world with a population of 26 million inhabitants (United Nations, 2016). Its metropolitan area its under severe vulnerabilities due to the lack of control of planning instruments on urban transformations. Needs in housing, resources (water and energy), infrastructures, transports, public services (health and education) among others are definitely going beyond local and regional government response capacities (Kapuria, 2014). Planning efforts, polices and regulations seem to have been instrumentalized under distinct historical moments, namely colonization, state control over land and nowadays capitalism and globalization. This leaded to the advent of an unplanned urbanism, with its extreme consequences and risks. It is intended to establish this nexus by revisiting the key planning moments in Delhi along with its different socioeconomic, cultural and political frameworks across time. Finally, we draw conclusions on how contemporary urban development models such as ‘sustainability’, ‘resilience’, ‘participated governance’ or ‘smart cities’ are being framed, perceived and applied under the context of Delhi urban planning instruments, polices and research. It seems that these narratives are serving as means to achieve specific goals by different drivers and actors. The discourse of sustainability is used to sell gated urbanizations for higher income classes, situated in greened areas, far way from slums and pollution. Resilience and horizontal governance is pursuit by the state as a mean to make citizens resistant and accountable to deal with city problems withdrawing public institutions from its own responsibility. Smart Cities Agenda is based on a huge investment on technologic information systems (Delhi is home to many ICT companies) on the hope to end mobility and pollution problems, leaving aside the fact that 77% of Delhi population live under poverty, in precarious housing or without infrastructure (sewage systems, water distribution and services) (Kushwaha, 2016). It is intended to highlight the importance of this reflection for a deep rethinking on concepts and practices in urban planning field, specially in what concerns its normative generalization without taking into account the influences and consequences of distinct political, social,Publication Open Access Social innovation’ and contentious urban politics : Questioning the innovative potential of contested urban developments in Berlin(AESOP, 2017) Bianchi, Irene; Gualini, EnricoFollowing the ‘territorial’ approach, emerged in the 1990s, social innovation in and for local development is primarily conceived as a response to social exclusion dynamics and to the difficulties traditional public systems (including welfare ones) face in dealing with changing societal needs and in addressing ‘wicked’ challenges (Caulier-Griece at al., 2013: 5; Borzaga and Bodini, 2012). It is conceptualized as both the (positive) outcome of social transformation processes and the means through which social improvement can occur. This only takes place “when the mobilization of social and institutional practices succeeds in bringing about the satisfaction of previously alienated human needs, the relative empowerment of previously silent or excluded social groups through the creation of new ‘capabilities’, and, ultimately, the changes in existing social – and power – relations towards a more inclusive and democratic governance system” (Gonzalez et al., 2010: 54). These conditions refer to what Moulaert et al. (2005: 1976 2010) define as the three main dimensions of social innovation. The product dimension focuses on “innovation in the conceptualization, design, and production of goods and services that address social and environmental needs and market failures” (Nicholls and Murdock, 2012). The process dimension focuses on the redefinition of organizational arrangement and on restructuring of social relations in more socially inclusive terms. This is related to governance innovation, but it also encompasses the reconfiguration of social practices (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2010). The third dimension is more directly related to the empowerment of the actors involved, and it is based on the (progressive) assumption that “individuals and communities can muster the passion and have the capacity to self-organize and self-manage in equitable and inclusive manners” (Swyngedouw and Moulaert, 2010: 221).Publication Open Access On what ground stands strategic planning?(AESOP, 2017) Sturup, Sophie; Low, Nicholas; Jiaotong, Xi´anWe live today in a world where there is enlarged freedom for many of us to invent and reinvent who we are. This freedom, in late capitalist modernity, has also come at a cost. The freedom to invent and reinvent is grounded on an expectation that we can renegotiate the fundamental threads of what we are, and what we are known as. This freedom has spread beyond the individual to our institutions, political parties, and of course public persons. No longer is it possible to say definitively what or who someone is, nor is it possible to hold them to account for who or what they said they are or would be. Such holding to account would be tantamount to a reduction of their liberty. This paper explores what impact this lack of saying, and lack of accountability for what was said has on strategic plans. Starting from Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the loss of the public realm, we explore the consequences for strategic planning of this capacity to reinvent ourselves and consider how in this pluralist and individualised world a collectively arrived at vision of the future might be grounded and survive beyond the next saying of ourselves. Keywords: Heidegger, Arendt, Ontology of plannerPublication Open Access If neoliberalism is everything, maybe is it nothing? Questioning neoliberal ideology in spatial policies and projects(AESOP, 2017) Armondi, SimonettaNeoliberalism is held to be the dominant and pervasive economic policy agenda of our times, a powerful and expansive political rationality of class domination and exploitation, the manifestation of ‘capital resurgent’. Anderson describes it as ‘the most successful ideology in world history’ (Anderson 2000, 17). This paper tries to demonstrate how the new development project Milano Sesto in the metropolitan city of Milan, Italy – an ongoing large-scale development project of housing, retail, offices, and public services, symbolically built on former Falck steelwork industrial areas – can’t be understood as one of the embodiment of current pervasive neoliberal planning practice of the Western societies. Using this example, it is argued that contemporary transformation projects – and in particular large scale urban development projects – are the epitome of a set of contradictory processes, but cannot be understood as an example of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’. North East Milan is a particularly complex spatial context, one of the former heartlands of western European Fordism which experienced a significant level of deindustrialization and a reconfiguration of production at the local scale, with the crisis of the Fordist mass production system. In the ‘90s, North East Milan was also subject to an intensive process of tertiarization, triggered by decline in the manufacturing sector and exacerbating some of the structural change processes already initiated in previous years. With a densely populated and infrastructure territory, North East Milan is currently facing a second round of economic restructuring following the economic shock caused by the global financial crisis in 2008.The paper reflects the change of an established sector of the urban region to grasp the socio spatial relation and dynamics that characterized the geography of North East Milan during three main, intertwined, phases of capitalist development: - the long phase of growth and urban expansion; - the season of the Fordist crisis and the subsequent economic restructuring; - the current cycle of economic and spatial shrinkage after the 2008 global crisis. The paper analyses the different construction processes and treatment of problems that define the space of public policies and private transformation projects, questioning if it can be identified as neoliberal planning project.Publication Open Access The challenges of planning in the unequal cities. Urban poverty workshop for innovating urban planners education path(AESOP, 2017) De Leo, Daniela; Alberti, Valentina; Bodino, MiriamThe recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals scored a point of no return in the international debate on development, stating that the separation between the rich part and the poor part of the population is no longer with the North and the South of the world, but between nearby areas in always more highly polarized contexts. In this framework, a deeper knowledge of the spatial dimension of poverty and of its spatial implications is required; especially in the Italian Faculty of Architecture where urban design and plan-making are frequently still considered "the real core" of the discipline with the general under-evaluation of the wicked problems. On the contrary, in the United States, thanks to the passionate work of Ananya Roy, this knowledge found its place, first in the university program at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of UC Berkeley, and then in Los Angeles, being highly appreciated both by students, scholars and NGOs. According to this awareness, the first workshop "Urban Poverty. The praxis of planning in unequal cities" organized in September 2016 at the Sapienza’s Faculty of Architecture in Rome, gave the opportunity for discussing and testing theory and practices of urban research and city planning with issues of poverty, in particular regards of western cities and the city of Rome. This first experiment offered the opportunity to think about the interdisciplinary and/or international teaching aimed at preparing students for today’s and tomorrow’s planning challenges in the unequal cities.Publication Open Access Global south planning: from war to wars(AESOP, 2017) Canuto, FredericoNot because of the various number of armed conflicts that are happening in Brazil related to land distribution, indigenous rights, social justice or many others issues, nor because European refugees, financial and democratic crisis nor because USA intervention on Middle East and north American racial struggles that created the Black Lives Matters Movement nor because another similar issues in countries around the world, nor even because protests in city streets in Cairo, Athens, Madrid, etc. since 2008 financial crisis; war is the politics that became the paradigm of internal and external relations by nation states around the globe because war is a modus operandi that always has been used as a politic since the beginning of the foundations of these very own nations and states. Disguised and/or underestimated by media and even theoretical and political thought as just “conflicts”, what is visible is that a war keeps continuing as the exercise of politics. And when this concept of war and politics is thought in an urban planning context, it serves to maintain the political dimension of everyday life impenetrable to disruptive and constitutional forces.Publication Open Access Challenges and tricky words. a stronger role for planners(AESOP, 2017) De Leo, DanielaIn the last 20 years, a deliberate strategy of impoverishment of local governments argued the imperative need of: a) involving at all (public) costs, the private sector through the “trojan horse” of governance (Miraftab 2004); b) designing big and shortsighted urban projects (frequently destroying public resources and ignoring public needs) through the mantra of the urban and territorial competition. As it has been already noted, “by elevating Governance above Government, and Economics above Politics, the global policy undermined nation- and state-building capacities in many Countries” (Demmers, Jilberto, Hogenboom, 2004). Moreover, through the rhetoric on pluralism, the neo-liberal governance has contributed to shrink and destroy the relevance of public interest. In fact, behind the 'screen' of governance and the representation of an amorphous citizenship and a not qualified of diffuse interests, the deployment of capitalism has prevailed. This legitimized the partial and strongest interests into shaping the public agenda within the polarized inequalities. In this framework, the paper will give some suggestions and advices for rethinking current problems, and trying to deal with them, by starting by the critical evaluation of some words we use. Moreover, by focusing on the ethic of responsibility and accountability of planners (and for most of us as planning scholars), the paper argues that a stronger role for planners and planning scholars has to do with our own field of responsibility (such as professionals/practitioners/scholars), and moreover with our commitment in building and using new theories and research approaches at least to: a) incorporate the ‘others’/minorities by considering furthermore the interaction between capitalism accumulation in space and the minorities (Yiftachel 2013); b) improve critical urban theories mixing with place-based planning and research practices (Campbell 2012; 2014), by applying different approaches; c) co-produce (Watson 2014) a public model of development, being aware of the oligopolistic elites and extractive institutions (Acemouglou, Robinson, 2012).Publication Open Access Learning from Europe?(AESOP, 2017) Fischer, Karl FriedhelmThe rich history of European planning thought has been radiating out to countries outside of Europe for a long time, either in the form of colonial planning and by providing active guidance and orientation or simply by serving as a model for the look from the outside. Within Europe, the exchange of ideas and practical experience has been continuous from the beginnings of planning and urban design – whether we consider our professional field to have started in the Renaissance and Baroque era or whether we want to restrict our perspective to the discipline of ‘modern planning’ in the 19th century, or, again in a different context, in the 1960s. There is a rich literature dealing with periods and areas of planning in which the international exchange of ideas has been particularly lively and influential, extending from, say, the garden city movement, via the exchange of ideas in classic modernism and the period of post-war reconstruction to the very recent history.Publication Open Access Role and goals of ontological analysis in understanding space and places(AESOP, 2017) Stufano Melone, Maria Rosaria; Borri, Dino; Camarda, Domenico; Borgo, StefanoPlaces are landscapes as seen from far away, places are cities lived from inside or cities imaged from outside: are they ecological ecosystems too? We intend to focus our attention on lived places. Physical places are complex entities. Nonetheless, we should first distinguish a concept of space from a concept of place. Each of these concepts has different declinations and for each declination there is a possible definition. From a cognitive or a designer’s perspective space is instead conceived as something different, at least not explicitly a 3-dimensional subspace (Freksa et al., 2014). A place is an interpreted space, a reasoned space, a space with feelings, a result of an aesthetic fruition of a physical space. We can define physical space as a set of mental images, spaces of representation, and the architecture of cognitive processes in vision theory. The essence of place lies in the quality of being somewhere specific, knowing that you are "here" rather than "there" (Rapoport, 1977) for example enclosure becomes a very important aspect of place-making which also seems, in some way, to be related to the concept of territory.