Urban and Landscape Perspectives – serie

In the present age of migration, the influx of immigrants from distant lands leads inevitably to the spatial and social restructuring of cities and regions.

This book explores new forms and modalities of relations between people and space that increasingly affect the life of the city. The investigation takes as its starting point the idea that in contemporary societies the loss of our relationship with place is a symptom of a breakdown in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. This in turn has caused a crisis not only in taste, but also in our sense of beauty, our aesthetic instinct, and our moral values. It has also led to the loss of our engagement with the landscape, which is essential for cities to function.The authors argue that new, fertile forms of interaction between people and space are now happening in what they call the ‘intermediate space’, at the border of “urban normality” and those parts of a city where citizens experiment with unconventional social practices. This new interaction engenders a collective conscience, giving a new and productive vigor to the actions of individuals and also their relations with their environment.These new relations emerge only after we abandon what is called the “therapeutic illusion of space”, which still exists today, and which binds in a deterministic manner the quality of civitas, the associative life of people in the city, to the quality of urban space. Projects for the city should, instead, have as their keystone the notion of social action as a return to a critical perspective, to a courageous acceptance of social responsibility, at the same time as seeking the generative structures of urban life in which civitas and urbs again acknowledge each other.

The book analyzes the impact of urban movements on government and public policies in a context of rapid urban transformations, public policy crises and increasing social inequalities. The essays show how the impact of the movements is increasing and has effects both in the orientation of the policies, as in their form of management and its effects.

The book analyzes the impact of urban movements on government and public policies in a context of rapid urban transformations, public policy crises and increasing social inequalities. The essays show how the impact of the movements is increasing and has effects both in the orientation of the policies, as in their form of management and its effects.

According to this hypothesis, the two above-mentioned variables tend to change according to a linear and direct correlation: upward variation of the degree of institutionalisation of the governance system tends to correspond to upward variation in the quality of the policy, and vice versa.

According to this hypothesis, the two above-mentioned variables tend to change according to a linear and direct correlation: upward variation of the degree of institutionalisation of the governance system tends to correspond to upward variation in the quality of the policy, and vice versa.

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in São Paulo, industrial case studies and the details of three squatter settlements, and communities in the periphery researched in Simone Buechler’s book, Labor in a Globalizing City, allow us to better understand the period of economic transformation in São Paulo from 1996 to 2003.

The book focuses on the relationship between nature conservation policies and landscape policies. This is a relevant subject due to the current need of reviving nature conservation policies, which are today affected by a general effectiveness deficiency. To this end, landscape policies can play a crucial role, bridging nature and culture, fostering more integrated approaches to nature conservation and stimulating the active participation of local communities.The book gathers reflections, researches and experiences developed on an international level on this subject by experts coming from different international contexts (Europe, U.S.A.), various disciplinary backgrounds (geographers, planners, biologists, historians, jurists, economists, etc.) and several institutional bodies (Universities, administrative bodies, international organizations such as IUCN, EUROPARC Federation, UNESCO, etc.). The overall reflections gathered in the book - which is divided in three main sections: regulations and institutional frameworks, policies, actions and tools - combine to suggest innovative visions about the relationships between nature policies and landscape policies.

Within the most recent discussion on smart cities and the way this vision is affecting urban changes and dynamics, this book explores the interplay between planning and design both at the level of the design and planning domains’ theories and practices.Urban transformation is widely recognized as a complex phenomenon, rich in uncertainty. It is the unpredictable consequence of complex interplay between urban forces (both top-down or bottom-up), urban resources (spatial, social, economic and infrastructural as well as political or cognitive) and transformation opportunities (endogenous or exogenous).The recent attention to Urban Living Lab and Smart City initiatives is disclosinga promising bridge between the micro-scale environments, with the dynamics of such forces and resources, and the urban governance mechanisms. This bridge is represented by those urban collaborative environments, where processes of smart service co-design take place throughdialogic interaction with and among citizens within a situated and cultural-specific frame.

The book focuses on the relationship between nature conservation policies and landscape policies. This is a relevant subject due to the current need of reviving nature conservation policies, which are today affected by a general effectiveness deficiency. To this end, landscape policies can play a crucial role, bridging nature and culture, fostering more integrated approaches to nature conservation and stimulating the active participation of local communities.The book gathers reflections, researches and experiences developed on an international level on this subject by experts coming from different international contexts (Europe, U.S.A.), various disciplinary backgrounds (geographers, planners, biologists, historians, jurists, economists, etc.) and several institutional bodies (Universities, administrative bodies, international organizations such as IUCN, EUROPARC Federation, UNESCO, etc.). The overall reflections gathered in the book - which is divided in three main sections: regulations and institutional frameworks, policies, actions and tools - combine to suggest innovative visions about the relationships between nature policies and landscape policies.

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in São Paulo, industrial case studies and the details of three squatter settlements, and communities in the periphery researched in Simone Buechler’s book, Labor in a Globalizing City, allow us to better understand the period of economic transformation in São Paulo from 1996 to 2003.  Buechler’s in-depth ethnographic research over a period of 17 years include interviews with a variety of social actors ranging from favela inhabitants to Wall Street bankers. Buechler examines the paradox of a globalizing city with highly developed financial, service, and industrial sectors, but at the same time a growing sector of microenterprises, degraded labor, considerable unemployment, unprecedented inequality, and precarious infrastructure in its low-income communities. The author argues that informalization and low-income women’s labor are an integral part of the global economy.  Other countries are continuing to use the same kind of neo-liberal economic model even though once again with the latest global financial crisis, it has proven to be detrimental to many workers.

This book combines urban planning and architectural tools in an attempt to overcome the limitations of sectoral measures. In this perspective, it offers a forum for the debate of different approaches used by schools of planning and architecture. It explores strategies by drawing from the potential contributions of cognitive models for decisions, the role of utopian thinking and retrofitting actions and their interconnectedness, the role of cultural legacy  for urban and landscape design, the design perspectives about public spaces, and the role of architecture design and urban and regional planning for landscape quality.The book also discusses on design as a process of decision-making that operates as an act of empathy that aligns with human and ecological values -  emotional, physical and socio-cultural. Each planning and design act has different possible effects  able to help making clear strategic and local actions, contributing to community empowerment andto landscape and local governance.Design activity along the river and multiple experiences (design processes, urban fringe design, agri-urban models, river parks, UNESCO sites, River Contracts, greenbelts and ecological networks), through reflection on design roles, helping to understand the design process and its results at different scales. Roberta Ingaramo, architect, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Architectural and Urban Design, Department  of Architecture and Design (DAD), Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy), Master in Conservation of Historic Towns and Buildings, Katholieke Universiteit (Belgium). roberta.ingaramo@polito.it Angioletta Voghera, architect, PhD, is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Inter-university Department of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning (DIST), Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy). angioletta.voghera@polito.it

Within the most recent discussion on smart cities and the way this vision is affecting urban changes and dynamics, this book explores the interplay between planning and design both at the level of the design and planning domains’ theories and practices.Urban transformation is widely recognized as a complex phenomenon, rich in uncertainty. It is the unpredictable consequence of complex interplay between urban forces (both top-down or bottom-up), urban resources (spatial, social, economic and infrastructural as well as political or cognitive) and transformation opportunities (endogenous or exogenous).The recent attention to Urban Living Lab and Smart City initiatives is disclosinga promising bridge between the micro-scale environments, with the dynamics of such forces and resources, and the urban governance mechanisms. This bridge is represented by those urban collaborative environments, where processes of smart service co-design take place throughdialogic interaction with and among citizens within a situated and cultural-specific frame.

This book combines urban planning and architectural tools in an attempt to overcome the limitations of sectoral measures. In this perspective, it offers a forum for the debate of different approaches used by schools of planning and architecture. It explores strategies by drawing from the potential contributions of cognitive models for decisions, the role of utopian thinking and retrofitting actions and their interconnectedness, the role of cultural legacy  for urban and landscape design, the design perspectives about public spaces, and the role of architecture design and urban and regional planning for landscape quality.The book also discusses on design as a process of decision-making that operates as an act of empathy that aligns with human and ecological values -  emotional, physical and socio-cultural. Each planning and design act has different possible effects  able to help making clear strategic and local actions, contributing to community empowerment andto landscape and local governance.Design activity along the river and multiple experiences (design processes, urban fringe design, agri-urban models, river parks, UNESCO sites, River Contracts, greenbelts and ecological networks), through reflection on design roles, helping to understand the design process and its results at different scales. Roberta Ingaramo, architect, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Architectural and Urban Design, Department  of Architecture and Design (DAD), Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy), Master in Conservation of Historic Towns and Buildings, Katholieke Universiteit (Belgium). roberta.ingaramo@polito.it Angioletta Voghera, architect, PhD, is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Inter-university Department of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning (DIST), Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy). angioletta.voghera@polito.it

This book explores the relationship between the sciences of representation and the strategy of landscape valorisation. The topic is connected to the theme of the image of the city, which is extended to the territory scale and applied to case studies in Italy’s Umbria region, where the goal is to strike a dynamic balance between cultural heritage and nature. The studies demonstrate how landscape represents an interpretive process of finding meaning, a product of the relationships between mankind and the places in which it lives.  The work proceeds from the assumption that it is possible to describe these connections between environment, territory and landscape by applying the Vitruvian triad, composed of Firmitas (solidity), Utilitas (utility) and Venustas(beauty). The environment, the sum of the conditions that influence all life, represents the place’s solidity, because it guarantees its survival. In turn, territory is connected to utility, and through its etymological meaning is linked to possession, to a domain; while landscape, as an “area perceived by people”, expresses the search for beauty in a given place, the process of critically interpreting a vision.

The Reinvented City reflects on externity, the principal feature of a reinvented city. Three fundamental trends of the city are investigated, "discomposed", "generic" and "segregated" phenomena with the loss of the city as a space of social interaction and communication. The interpretative categories of externity are the intermediate spaces, the counterspaces, the void, the edge, the territory and the environment, places on which to base the future city project. Important questions are posed: What is the true public sphere in contemporary societies? What is the contemporary public space corresponding to it? In what way can the city project construct contemporary public space?

Urban Landscape Perspectives explores how landscape terminology can be usefully brought into the urban debate. Articles in this book include theoretical reflections on the landscape as an eminently project-like figure. It argues for attention to be drawn to the landscape as the origin of the sense of man’s home and of the reasons for the city, as well as to the search for the primary elements of city construction, of its public sphere. This role can only be developed with project-oriented intentions reconstructing the bond between city and landscape. We therefore associate the project of the landscape with theproject of the city.The title of this book comes to our aid in that it enables us to limit the field of possible definitions to the sphere of relations existing between the landscape project and the city project. When we state the two terms city and landscape separately, we are implicitly acknowledging a detachment between two entities that tradition has considered inseparable.Other theoretical reflections, applications and best practices explore the involvement of the territory in the organisation of both urban life and landscape; how changes within the city have opened up traditional concepts of centrality towards new forms of centrality, as well as towards more environmental interpretations of centrality. The articles in this volume are by scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, architecture, urban and landscape planning, who have a particular interest in and experience of the city project at various operative scales.

The volume brings together contributions by both leading scholars and young academics with a particular experience in the urban potential of the territory in situations not necessarily linked to the dense metropolis, its compact form or to city sprawl. What brings these scholars together is their common reflection on this central theme, though from varied disciplinary and experimental backgrounds. Leading academics like A. Mela (Prof. of Territory and Environment Sociology, University of Turin), S. Tagliagambe (Prof. of Philosophy and Science, University of Sassari), G. Maciocco (Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Alghero, Italy) and P. Pittaluga have accumulated long-time experience in developing environmental approaches within Philosophy, Sciences, Environmental Planning and Art. Researchers like I. Doucet, N. Janssens and K. Boon in their turn bring in approaches related to specific European contexts.

The Reinvented City reflects on externity, the principal feature of a reinvented city. Three fundamental trends of the city are investigated, "discomposed", "generic" and "segregated" phenomena with the loss of the city as a space of social interaction and communication. The interpretative categories of externity are the intermediate spaces, the counterspaces, the void, the edge, the territory and the environment, places on which to base the future city project. Important questions are posed: What is the true public sphere in contemporary societies? What is the contemporary public space corresponding to it? In what way can the city project construct contemporary public space?

Urban Landscape Perspectives explores how landscape terminology can be usefully brought into the urban debate. Articles in this book include theoretical reflections on the landscape as an eminently project-like figure. It argues for attention to be drawn to the landscape as the origin of the sense of man’s home and of the reasons for the city, as well as to the search for the primary elements of city construction, of its public sphere. This role can only be developed with project-oriented intentions reconstructing the bond between city and landscape. We therefore associate the project of the landscape with theproject of the city.The title of this book comes to our aid in that it enables us to limit the field of possible definitions to the sphere of relations existing between the landscape project and the city project. When we state the two terms city and landscape separately, we are implicitly acknowledging a detachment between two entities that tradition has considered inseparable.Other theoretical reflections, applications and best practices explore the involvement of the territory in the organisation of both urban life and landscape; how changes within the city have opened up traditional concepts of centrality towards new forms of centrality, as well as towards more environmental interpretations of centrality. The articles in this volume are by scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, architecture, urban and landscape planning, who have a particular interest in and experience of the city project at various operative scales.

The volume brings together contributions by both leading scholars and young academics with a particular experience in the urban potential of the territory in situations not necessarily linked to the dense metropolis, its compact form or to city sprawl. What brings these scholars together is their common reflection on this central theme, though from varied disciplinary and experimental backgrounds. Leading academics like A. Mela (Prof. of Territory and Environment Sociology, University of Turin), S. Tagliagambe (Prof. of Philosophy and Science, University of Sassari), G. Maciocco (Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Alghero, Italy) and P. Pittaluga have accumulated long-time experience in developing environmental approaches within Philosophy, Sciences, Environmental Planning and Art. Researchers like I. Doucet, N. Janssens and K. Boon in their turn bring in approaches related to specific European contexts.

Our societies need to solve difficult issues to attain sustainability. The main challenges include, among others, global warming, demographic change, an energy crisis, and loss of biodiversity. In tackling these issues, a holistic understanding of our living space is important. The field of landscape planning and design is at the core the holistic concept and it makes several contributions to achieving sustainability. First, landscape planning and design connects different spatial scales: from site to region to the planet. Second, it focuses on close interrelationships between human activities and nature. Third, it is concerned with people’s values toward their surroundings. This book is based on the presentations made by German and Japanese scholars at the international symposium “New Trends of Landscape Design: Seamless Connection of Landscape Planning and Design from Regional to Site Scales — The Cultural Context” held on November 5, 2012, at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University.

Our societies need to solve difficult issues to attain sustainability. The main challenges include, among others, global warming, demographic change, an energy crisis, and loss of biodiversity. In tackling these issues, a holistic understanding of our living space is important. The field of landscape planning and design is at the core the holistic concept and it makes several contributions to achieving sustainability. First, landscape planning and design connects different spatial scales: from site to region to the planet. Second, it focuses on close interrelationships between human activities and nature. Third, it is concerned with people’s values toward their surroundings. This book is based on the presentations made by German and Japanese scholars at the international symposium “New Trends of Landscape Design: Seamless Connection of Landscape Planning and Design from Regional to Site Scales — The Cultural Context” held on November 5, 2012, at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University.

Departing from a survey on the post-modern landscapes of tourism, this book explores the transformations the city has undergone and the way it has become a simulacrum offered to tourists, spectacularised with the aim of increasing its capacity for attraction. The experiences dealt with in the papers of authors belonging to different disciplinary fields, emphasise the city’s tendencies to create “stage-set contexts” of the private type, be it historic quarters, theme parks or hypermarkets. Issues like aestheticisation, thematisation and genericity are dealt with, conceptual categories that highlight the weak resistance cities put up against the rules of the leisure industry and, more generally speaking, the consumer economy.The book inquires into the capacity of the urban and territorial project to construct a perspective for a public dimension of space. This is linked with ethical action of the project involving an active relationship with places and a capacity to understand the dynamics of different urban populations. In this sense capacity for innovation and creativity can contribute to transforming “islands” of leisure into places of the city and consumers into citizens.

Landscape modelling integrates the differing perspectives of the many disciplines that deal with the landscape. It is motivated not only by the desire for scientific understanding, but also by the real-time demands of 21st century postindustrial society, which include the twin imperatives of stabilizing damaged ecosystems on the one hand, and finding effective ways to use the landscape on the other. The discipline has the specific goal of designing and assessing future scenarios of landscape development, while not losing sight of its past history, both ecological and socio-cultural. This book encompasses the interrelated disciplines of geography, landscape ecology and geoinformatics, and by drawing on their theories and methodologies introduces the concept of a living landscape with human action an inseparable part of its evolution. It offers researchers and decision-makers a number of ideas on how our landscape can best be utilized. The content reflects the need for sustainable landscape development, at the same time as considering long-term continuity as a major condition which enables us to maintain the diversity and multifunctionality of landscapes at regional and macro-regional scales. Employing advanced terminology and methods, this book provides specific results especially for scientists and landscape professionals.

This provocative collection of essays challenges traditional ideas of strategic s- tial planning and opens up new avenues of analysis and research. The diversity of contributions here suggests that we need to rethink spatial planning in several f- reaching ways. Let me suggest several avenues of such rethinking that can have both theoretical and practical consequences. First, we need to overcome simplistic bifurcations or dichotomies of assessing outcomes and processes separately from one another. To lapse into the nostalgia of imagining that outcome analysis can exhaust strategic planners’ work might appeal to academics content to study ‘what should be’, but it will doom itself to further irrelevance, ignorance of politics, and rationalistic, technocratic fantasies. But to lapse into an optimism that ‘good process’ is all that strategic planning requires, similarly, rests upon a ction that no credible planning analyst believes: that enough talk will miraculously transcend con ict and produce agreement. Neither sing- minded approach can work, for both avoid dealing with con ict and power, and both too easily avoid dealing with the messiness and the practicalities of negotiating out con icting interests and values – and doing so in ethically and politically critical ways, far from resting content with mere ‘compromise’. Second, we must rethink the sanctity of expertise. By considering analyses of planning outcomes as inseparable from planning processes, these accounts help us to see expertise and substantive analysis as being ‘on tap’, ready to put into use, rather than being particularly and technocratically ‘on top’.

The book is a collection of essays exploring the potential of multimedia to enrich and transform the planning field. By multimedia the authors refer to a broad range of new information and communication technologies (from film and video to digital ethnography and the internet), which are opening up new possibilities in planning practices, processes, pedagogy and research. The authors document the ways in which these ICTs can expand the language of planning and the creativity of planners; can evoke the lived experience (the spirit, memories, desires) of our 21st century mongrel cities by engaging with stories and storytelling; and can democratise planning practices.The text is epistemologically radical, in presenting an argument for the importance of "multiple languages" (ways of knowing) in the planning field, and making the connection between this epistemology and the almost infinite potential of Multimedia to provide varied tools to accomplish this transformation, displacing the supremacy of the rational, linear and hierarchical with more open, playful and imaginative approaches. Each of the authors brings practical experience with different forms of Multimedia use and reflects on the different potentialities offered by Multimedia for critical intervention in urban and regional issues, and the power dynamics embedded in such interventions.

Attempts at an autonomous planning theory are inadequate if they do not explore the interconnected fields of architecture and public policy. This is a documented critique of the eclecticism and abstraction of current international trends in planning theory.

The volume addresses the hybridisation of knowledge production in space-related research. In contrast with interdisciplinary knowledge, which is primarily located in scholarly environments, transdisciplinary knowledge production entails a fusion of academic and non-academic knowledge, theory and practice, discipline and profession. Architecture (and urbanism), operating as both a discipline and a profession, seems to form a particularly receptive ground for transdisciplinary research. However, this specificity has not yet been developed into a full-fledged, unique mode of knowledge production. In order to dedicate specific attention to transdisciplinary knowledge production, this book aims to explore (new) hybrid modes of inquiry that allow many of architecture’s longstanding schisms to be overcome: such as between theory/history and practice, critical theory and projective design, the adoption of an external viewpoint and a view-from-within (often under the guise of bottom-up vs. top-down). It therefore offers the reader a mix of contributions that elaborate on knowledge production that is situated in the (architectural and urban) profession or practice, and on practice-based approaches in theory.