Mahyar Arefi – författare

A new taxonomy of placemaking is needed; concerns have been expressed about the professionalization of placemaking through the proliferation of standards, zoning codes, and restrictive covenants. "Place matters" has become a mantra in many disciplines - architecture, urban planning and urban design, geography, and sociology to name a few. While conceptualized narrowly by individual disciplines, a holistic framework of placemaking is sorely missing. Mahyar Arefi seeks to fill this gap by exploring these questions: how are places physically created, socially mobilized, and politically contested?This book explores three competing approaches to placemaking: need-based, opportunity-based, and asset-based. Using a case study approach, the book delves into each paradigm and its stages of physical formation, social mobilization, and political contestation.

A new taxonomy of placemaking is needed; concerns have been expressed about the professionalization of placemaking through the proliferation of standards, zoning codes, and restrictive covenants. "Place matters" has become a mantra in many disciplines - architecture, urban planning and urban design, geography, and sociology to name a few. While conceptualized narrowly by individual disciplines, a holistic framework of placemaking is sorely missing. Mahyar Arefi seeks to fill this gap by exploring these questions: how are places physically created, socially mobilized, and politically contested? This book explores three competing approaches to placemaking: need-based, opportunity-based, and asset-based. Using a case study approach, the book delves into each paradigm and its stages of physical formation, social mobilization, and political contestation.

With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, informal settlements, or slums, continue to expand. This book explores the informality-urban design nexus, and asks why formal urban designers and planners have remained largely reluctant to address these challenges facing our cities.What distinguishes the formal vs. informal urban design paradigm? While urban designers are able to identify and address specific problems like walkability, gentrification, or sense of place, informal settlement problems prove inexorably complex, and harder to fathom to begin with.Therefore, seeking to demystify these epistemological ambiguities – while difficult – makes sense. The use of abductive reasoning, regulations, aesthetics, and design epitomise the formal, while informal urban planning and design is characterized by information, assets and adaptation. In support of these thematic differentiations, this book uses case studies to better contextualize and unpack the metaphorical distinctions of the two theoretical entities.Conceptualizing these two schools of thought this way, the book engages urban designers with these debates, and explores how informal settlement residents see themselves, act collectively, care about their settlements, and leverage opportunities.

The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism.

This book explores the tenacity of Iran’s informal settlements against the backdrop of the World Bank’s USD 80 million loan for physical upgrading. Arefi seeks to identify and unravel the distinctive models, policies, processes, and outcomes associated with it, and explains why—despite obvious challenges—informal settlements remain popular in Iran, and also how understanding them in a broader theoretical context helps rectify existing redevelopment policies in order to develop more effective ones.

This book explores the tenacity of Iran’s informal settlements against the backdrop of the World Bank’s USD 80 million loan for physical upgrading. Arefi seeks to identify and unravel the distinctive models, policies, processes, and outcomes associated with it, and explains why—despite obvious challenges—informal settlements remain popular in Iran, and also how understanding them in a broader theoretical context helps rectify existing redevelopment policies in order to develop more effective ones.

The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism.