2010 Urban change : The prospect of transformation

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Urban change : The prospect of transformation
(AESOP, 2010) Mironowicz, Izabela; Ryser, Judith
This book presents the outcome of the European Urban Summer School 2010 which was quite a complex event. We wanted to include both scientific outcomes reflected in the academic papers of the tutors and practical understanding emerging from the solutions proposed by the young planners. The latter had been working on particular tasks conceived by the organisers and described in the book, together with the overall idea of the school. The main concept of the book is to intertwine papers and case studies with the editors’ comments which slide like a snake through the book. Printed on the blue pages they are introducing each part, explaining the background and synthesising the presented material. The book begins with a brief description of the concept and issues of EUSS2010, followed by two presentations: the place (the City of Wrocław) and the teams of young planners who participated in the European Urban Summer School. The main body of the book is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the problem of heritage and its relation to development, the second focuses on transformation processes of cities and tools of intervention, and the third explores new form of the city. The three parts relate respectively to the past, present and future. The tutors’ profiles are presented after the final summary and the book finishes with acknowledgements and the team working on the European Urban Summer School in Wrocław. At the very end we allowed ourselves to present some thoughts for the future.
Open Access
Foreword
(AESOP, 2010) Clos, Joan
I am pleased to be able to introduce to you a very welcome publication on the European Urban Summer School which took place in Wrocław in September of 2010 thanks to the hard work of the Wrocław University of Technology’s School of Architecture with the support of our UN-HABITAT office in Warsaw. I also want to thank the partner institutions in this project: our main partner Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) ISOCARP and EURA, as well as the Lower Silesia Marshall Office and the City of Wrocław local authorities for their cooperation and support. As a result, at a 10 day summer school over 20 lecturers and 50 students from all over Europe had a chance to meet and look at practical cases of how to create a balance between heritage and development. It is published at a time when many countries in Europe are re-defining urban planning. That redefinition has to take place because urban Europe is contending with challenges of depopulation of cities, urban sprawl and the need for revitalisation of inner city areas. It is increasingly difficult to deny that the downgrading of planning has contributed to the problems being experienced. Not only does that lead to development which does not include adequate provision for public space or infrastructure but it can also contribute to exacerbating environmental problems.
Open Access
Foreword
(AESOP, 2010) Nilsson, Kristina L.
It is a pleasure to write an introduction to this fruitful summer school arranged by the Faculty of Architecture at Wrocław University of Technology. It was an honour for AESOP, Association of European Schools of Planning, to have been co-organiser with support from the UN-Habitat, especially its Warsaw Office. A group of planning practitioners and experienced academics have exchanged knowledge and experiences and skilled researchers from AESOP member schools all around Europe have acted as tutors. The summer school has focused on current planning challenges in European cities, where there are often conflicts between urban development and conservation of built-up areas and buildings. New building development is frequently stronger than historic preservation. The summer school has collected a number of interesting papers concerning the management of heritage values in urban regeneration. There are original examples of integration between heritage and development.
Open Access
Foreword
(AESOP, 2010) Dziekoński, Olgierd
Dear organizers, lecturers and participants of the european urban summer schools, I would like to thank you for inviting me to attend the European Urban Summer School in Wrocław, which is co-organised by the UN-Habitat, the Faculty of Architecture of the Wrocław University of Technology and the Assosciation of European Schools of Planning. I do welcome the fact that that this interesting event will bring together young urban planners from all across Europe. I very much regret that I will not be able to take part at this meeting but I would like to seize this opportunity and get some of my comments across to all those who are involved in this event. The challenges regarding urbanisation in Europe and in the world as a whole require an international discussion. The activitities and good practices, attained by local communities which thanks to decentralisation of powers can get actively involved in spatial planning and management processes, are worthy and need to be disseminated. Urbanisation in countries which are subjected to rapid social and economic changes creates new opportunities. Urban sprawl is not an adverse phenomena in itself. It is an inevitable trend in transition countries where people are eager to afford appropriate housing standards. So it can serve as an opportunity to build new towns, new urbanisation with high
Open Access
Foreword
(AESOP, 2010) Mironowicz, Izabela
One day in December 2009 I was sitting working on a book we produced after the International Urban Workshop, ‘Gardens of Art’… The morning was bright and a little bit misty and through the window I saw the tower of St George’s church in Kidderminster, in the UK. I was thinking that I was a little bit tired with urban workshops, summer schools and all these activities which cost a lot of efforts and I was wondering whether I should rather focus on something more quiet. That day I have got an email from Krzysztof Mularczyk, Head of UN Habitat Warsaw Office:
Open Access
Foreword
(AESOP, 2010) Mularczyk, Krzysztof
On a spring day in April 2008 I sat in an airport lounge with Olgierd Dziekoński, then a minister in the Ministry of Infrastructure now a minister in the Presidential Chancellery, and Anna Tibaijuka, then the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT and Undersecretary General of the United Nations (today the Minister for Housing and Member of Parliament in Tanzania). As we were waiting for Anna Tibaijuka’s flight to be called for departure we got round to discussing what UN-HABITAT could do for young people starting their career in urban planning and development. Olgierd Dziekonski gave us the idea of an annual summer school that could be used not only to exchange ideas and transmit knowledge and experience but also to build a network of such young planners. The idea of the European Urban Summer School was born.
Open Access
Concepts and issues of the european urban summer school in Wrocław
(AESOP, 2010) Mironowicz, Izabela; Ryser, Judith
Urbanisation is a global process, yet it has left a particular legacy in European cities which constituted the content of the 2010 UN-Habitat European Urban Summer School. Young professionals and tutors with diverse backgrounds congregated from all over Europe and beyond in a central European city to gain a better understanding of urban change. Reconciling heritage with development was the challenge to achieve a more sustainable urban future. ‘Sustainability’ was conceived here as a balance between historic legacy, regeneration and citywide urban transformation. Wrocław, the host city generously provided the empirical setting to test these assumptions, to verify their validity through international comparisons, and to offer young professionals the opportunity to elaborate interventi
Open Access
Dreams and reality quick review of ideas case study of Wrocław
(AESOP, 2010) Ossowicz, Tomasz
This paper is about ideas, dreams of Wrocław planners and municipal managers and about what happened as a result of these dreams. It is not a complete review of planning and planning policy implementation in Wrocław, but only of selected ideas. Thus the paper is divided into dreams rather than chapters. Analysing the existing Wrocław city structure, one can see something like a series of strips, most of them parallel to the Odra River (Fig.1). Some of them are dominated by housing, others by various economic activities. The housing areas are alternating with the strips of economic activities. The city structure is similar to the composition of a Big Mac with its many layers of bread and meet. Such a spatial arrangement is very efficient for the functioning of the transportation system. During the rush hour the majority of roads and lanes in both directions are used equally by car traffic. Also tramways going in opposite directions are equally full of passengers. Both empirical research and traffic computer simulations give evidence of this transportation system ‘behaviour’.
Open Access
Past : The inherited city preservation or change? (Introduction to part I)
(AESOP, 2010) Mironowicz, Izabela; Ryser, Judith
Cities may be conceived as heritage as a whole, including past and present dynamic change. However, more commonly heritage tends to relate to specific artefacts or quarters of the city to which different values are attributed over time. For example, the Royal Palace in Warsaw, entirely reconstructed after the Second World War, but according to the then understanding of ‘history’, acquired a new symbolic value of resistance while losing its function of seat of power held by the monarchy, and in modern Warsaw it constitutes a new determinant element of the city structure. Similarly, the Brandenburg Gate which was erected in 1791 in the west of Berlin’s fiscal excise wall containing the city’s extension in the 1730s played many different roles. During the Second World War the Nazis used the Gate as a party symbol. It constituted a border gate between the two parts of divided Berlin during the cold war and became a symbolic passage during the fall of the wall. Now heavily renovated it stands for the new status of Berlin as capital of united Germany.
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Madrid historic centre. Municipal strategies towards rehabilitation
(AESOP, 2010) Franchini, Teresa
The historic centre of Madrid is the result of a process of urban evolution over eleven centuries. With an area of approximately 400 hectares it is one of the biggest historic centres in Europe. The ancient tissue of the city has maintained the status of a neuralgic hub throughout its existence, bringing together Madrid’s most important buildings and its most dynamic activities. The maintenance of this built heritage was not an object of interest, either for the government or for individuals until the mid 1970s, when the level of architectural, urban, social and environmental deterioration forced the Municipality of Madrid to take measures for its conservation and rehabilitation. Although since 1926 a national Decree was in force which regulates the protection of the cultural heritage, including the environment and, in specific cases, historic zones, the few public interventions made in the centre of Madrid were directed only to the preservation of some unique historic and artistic monuments, such as the Church of San Antonio de la Florida, declared national monument in 1905 to protect the dome painted by Goya, or the remains of the Moorish walls that protected the original city in 1954.
Open Access
City centre regeneration : Оld town east
(AESOP, 2010) Barranco, Ricardo; Egyud, Reka; Maeiyat, Mohammad; Murseli, Rizah; Swistun, Deborah; Triantis, Loukas
The area is located in Wrocław’s historic city centre, close to the central market, in the most touristic part of the city near the Odra river. Replacing second world war destruction the area was regenerated mainly with blocks of flats and public open spaces following the principles of modern urban planning and architecture. Not well connected with its adjacent historic core, the main city market, commercial activities and educationalcultural buildings on the river bank, it has valuable permeable internal spaces between buildings. We have identified several problems which impede the material value of the area and needs redressing. The immaterial value is represented by the modernist style of the housing blocks, their layout and the associated open spaces, together with historic events still present in the collective memory. Interaction with local inhabitants informed our SWOT analysis.
Open Access
EU urban tools and urban regeneration
(AESOP, 2010) Elisei, Pietro
Under the expression of ‘Urban Regeneration’ it is possible to find many and different kinds of strategies, policies and programmes. Since the end of the 1960s policies of urban regeneration have been designed and implemented on the European continent. These urban policies, at least the first examples, are an attempt to manage urban transformations especially of highly industrialised Western European cities. After the end of post war growth, in the 70s and in the 80s, traditional industrial structure changed rapidly all over Western Europe (Couch, Fraser, Percy, 2003). Urban renewal, Urban revitalisation, Urban redevelopment, Urban requalification, Stadterneuerung, Stadtsanierung, Rénovation urbaine, Réhabilitation urbaine, Renouvellement urbain, Assainissement urbain, Byfornyels, Bysanering, Rinnovamento urbano, Recupero urbano, Riqualificazione urbana are a set of different ways to identify the main urban regeneration and urban renewal policies across Europe in the last 40 years. This set can be easily widened with many other terms. All these expressions represent roughly policies and models for the neighbourhood scale (ABIs, Area Based Initiatives). They are based on partnership building principles, promoting participatory planning, with little relevant financial public investment, and limited in time (Elisei, 2004).
Open Access
Nowy Dwór Мuchobór
(AESOP, 2010) Hakbart, Bartosz; Klemendi, Naim; Lahutsenak, Darya; Nogalski, Szymon; Rossato, Chiara; Serrenho, Tiago
Fabryczna is the largest borough of Wrocław with crucial industrial facilities. Situated in the western part of the city south of the Odra river it contains the Nowy Dwór and Muchobór Mały neighbourhoods with 15.000 and 5.000 inhabitants respectively. They are surrounded by allotments, a large shopping mall, industrial and intensive agricultural areas, a large park (Park Tysiąclecia – Millenium Park), a river, railways, a congested inner city ring-road and a planned motorway bypass. Contrasting architectural typologies characterise these housing estates. Nowy Dwór, a latemodernist prefabricated development from the 1970s with schools, community centres, a swimming pool, church, retail, large open areas and cul de sac access to blocks of flats varying between 3 and 15 stories creates an anonymous and dehumanising atmosphere. Muchobór Mały a low density, pre-war working-class housing district, organised on a grid model with single, mostly one-storey family villas with private gardens, small businesses, green areas, but few local services has a suburban feel. Local services are located along the busy road separating the two estates which are accessed by buses and by rail from the city centre.
Open Access
Is heritage really important? Is history really important?
(AESOP, 2010) Vout, Michael
‘Is heritage really important’ and ‘is history really important’ are two separate but related issues. They are also two enormous questions for which the following brief examination is only a very small response and one which is directed to the way in which heritage and history have a role in urban design. Heritage motivates people to travel in order to quench their thirst for knowledge, to reinforce their place in history and contextualise a place geographically and socially. In doing so they spend considerable sums of money to the benefit of the place.’ The UK planning system arranges shopping into two types: convenience shopping and comparison shopping. Although planning might wish it to be otherwise (for the sometimes over-simplistic notion that everybody should just use the corner shop) it is understandable that when shopping for the usual bulk food needs, ease of shopping and parking often take priority over the physical appearance of the place. This is not to say that the many large retail parks in the UK are perfectly good – on the contrary, whilst they might combine the bulk shopping needs with easy parking, they are unsustainable. They are frequently associated with traffic congestion problems and have contributed to the decline of the traditional shopping street. The point I am making here is that the quality of the immediate physical context is frequently not the determining factor for the convenience shopper.
Open Access
Urban design and climate change with emphasis on energy
(AESOP, 2010) Lorimer, Stephen
In the context of climate change urban design has a dual role to try to limit and adapt to the consequences of climate change. The role of urban design may have been neglected because it deals with a complex set of dependent parts which are hard to quantify. Understanding urban design and climate change means looking beyond the merely technical solutions that deliver energy to meet demand with less carbon emissions. Urban designers are well placed to reassess the patterns of living and building which have turned an energyhungry modern world into a physical reality. One of the role of urban design is to assist in adapting the built environment to climate change resulting from global temperature rises due to greenhouse gas emissions occurring due to human activity on the planet. Urban design can be an enabler for other disciplines to reduce energy and material consumption – making the job of campaigners, architects, and engineers easier and in some cases even possible at the sharp end of the fight to limit climate change.
Open Access
Regeneration and conservation : Świebodzki station area
(AESOP, 2010) Bolhuis, Klaas Jan; Brajović, Tamara; Gendek, Izabela; Makhatay, Volha; Marchwicka, Barbara; Mohacsi, Katalin
The Świebodzki Station, out of action since 1991, built in 1842 in classical style as a connection hub, is an attractive landmark. Located 800 metres from Rynek, 1,5 km from Wrocław Główny station and 9 km from the airport, the station houses a dance club. A market stretching over the tracks is mostly informal, self organising, well-known and well-visited. Hotly debated, the station and its surroundings have been subjected to numerous studies and strategies. Despite current uses, the area does not live up to its full potential of central location, vacant land, potential rail-airport interchange and valuable historic building. Wrocław’s development opportunities as EURO2012 host city and 2016 European Cultural Capital offers the possibility of developing this site into a unique integrated mixed use area which we conceive as the Golden Gateway to the city. The design of the ‘golden gateway to the city’ consists of three elements: a gateway, an icon, and a place, inspired respectively by Sheffield’s Gold Route, Wrocław’s Renoma department store and the CAT (City Airport Train) connection between Vienna and its airport. The place is already a multi-modal node and appropriate as a gateway for a quick and high quality rail connection between the airport to the city centre, reusing existing tracks to accommodate the 2.2 million passengers expected from 2014.
Open Access
New city structure: Does it come from the past?
(AESOP, 2010) Wawrzyniec Zipser
The spatial structure of cities, especially large ones, has been a challenge for generations of planners and architects. Its complexity causes many difficulties for the very task of its identification, let alone planning and solving spatial problems. The drive to improve, better yet adapt the spatial structure of a city to the needs of its inhabitants has marked the history of cities as long as they have existed. Regardless of the need for security, prestige, beauty or accessibility, the principle goal has always been functional solutions. The spatial structure of cities is determined by many natural and topographical factors, such as rivers, landscapes and natural resources. Other important factors include their position in the settlement hierarchy or the role a specific unit plays or played in the settlement structure (Zipf’s Law). In addition to historic factors, current tendencies, such as the global economic situation and changes in the spatial behaviour of citizens linked to their level of socio-economic development are influencing the spatial structure of cities. Together all these factors require a city-specific approach. A feasible framework which can be fitted in a flexible way to individual cases will make it possible to prevent undesirable or dangerous processes to the natural and social environment.
Open Access
Urban regeneration : Saint Matthew’s square
(AESOP, 2010) Silva Barbosa, Adrianna; Janowski, Konrad; Jurecka, Agnieszka; Mo, Aaron; Muccio, Giordano; Stagova, Sami
The 54 ha Nadodrze neighbourhood located in the central part of the city of Wrocław near the Old Town is one of the few districts that was not destroyed during the Second World War. Close to the only train station operating after the war it was populated since then by immigrants of many nationalities and social backgrounds. Its layout and architecture are great examples of pre war German planning1 with a regular grid consisting of dense urban 5 storey blocks, wide roads and a central public area (Saint Matthew’s Square). The current conditions of the buildings no longer reflect the high quality of the original design and gradually neglected, the area lost its meaning within the urban structure of the city. This densely populated area suffers from precarious social conditions, such as low income, unemployment, lack of education, addiction, together with an aging population. There is poor interaction between the multicultural communities (mainly Polish, Ukrainian, Roma gypsies etc). Due to the very complex ownership pattern embedded in Polish ownership law during the transition period, buildings normally owned by the municipality house people with a lifetime lease while municipal programmes aim to make them real owners of their dwellings. Conversely, the big courtyards inside the blocks remain publicly owned and do not serve their original purpose of semi-private recreational areas. Some buildings have been privatised, others remain social housing and new private developments are being introduced in the area.
Open Access
Urban explorations : Methods and tools
(AESOP, 2010) Iossifova, Deljana
During the years that I spent working as an architect, I often found myself struggling to maintain a last shred of professional integrity; the realisation that I was making a living from the continuous invention of potential future scenarios in the form of speedily produced designs of all varieties and scales – solely based on information conveyed to me in semi-professional briefs produced by up-and-coming developers or recent government officials with very particular interests – left me perplexed and devoid of answers to plaguing questions. Did being an architect, I was wondering, make me complicit in the methodical production and reproduction of the kind of socioeconomic processes that, under different circumstances, I would be committed to actively combat? Was I prepared to bear the responsibility for the possible social, economic, and environmental repercussions of my seemingly innocent practice as an architect? In view of questions like these, I chose to stop being a full-time architect for a while and shift the focus of my activities from the incessant production of random designs to the slightly slower pace and remoteness of ‘non-action’. I treated myself to the freedom of being a full-time researcher, instead (or rather, it was the Japanese Ministry of Education that treated me with that option by awarding me a Monbukagakusho Scholarship). Shanghai – where I had lived and worked over the last few years, and the city that I had learned to love – would serve as the setting for my research, its extremes so blatantly apparent.
Open Access
Industrial heritage: Hutmen
(AESOP, 2010) Durate, Rui; Gubic, Ilija; Jankovic, Natasha; Moritz, Suzanne; Tusinski, Olivia; Wolff, Manuel
Hutmen is a large industrial site of 39,2 hectares located 1,5 km south-west of Wrocław city centre. Established in the early 20th century, the site has been constructed to create better working conditions, health care and amenities for workers. The steel foundry forms the traditional core of industrial activity, accompanied by additional small businesses (manufacturers, radio stations, car services and light industrial). Hutmen’s distinctive industrialism with its central location, distinctive architecture, excellent transport connections to the city centre, city bypass, and airport, public transport infrastructure has become a heritage interest. Preserving industrial and light industrial functions, the relocation of the steel foundry has become a priority for both the company and the city ranging from high rise to detached housing and services of Wrocław. The site is surrounded by vast garden landscapes (allotments) and Grabiszyn neighbourhood with 14.000 residents.