Urban Book Series – serie

This book examines how non-economic inter- and intra-group relationships were reflected in residential patterns around the first decade of the 21st century in Whitechapel, an old yet attractive absorption neighbourhood in east London, UK. It sheds light on different levels of organisation that shape urban space and suggests an integrated understanding linking socio-cultural-religious norms and the urban environment that could be extrapolated to other cities. It studies core methodologies through joining of detailed, primary empirical research, collected through direct engagement with the communities of interest, with a wider theoretical and modelling framework. This study identifies the main engines of organised neighbourhood change and the difficulties of planning. It deals with individuals in the housing market and sheds light on similar processes occurring in other city centres with diverse population groups.Based on residential records at the resolution of single family and apartment covering a period of 17 years, the study reveals and analyses powerful mechanisms of residential relations at the apartment, building and the near neighbourhood level. Taken together, these revealed mechanisms are candidates for explaining the dynamics of residential segregation in the area during the period 1995 to 2012. Whitechapel's communities are extremely diverse, composed of 27 ethnic and religious groups and sub-groups. The residential preferences of group members are highly affected by the need to live among "friends" – other members of the same group. How is it that the area has been so attractive for so many people to live in, whilst at the same time being so diverse that people cannot achieve their stated preferences to live amongst 'friends'?

Over recent decades, the historico-geographical approach to urban morphology has been prominent in the debate on the physical form of our cities and on the agents and processes shaping that form over time.

This book documents and analyses spatial planning in Ghana, providing a comprehensive and critical discussion of the evolving institutional and legal arrangements that have shaped and defined Ghana’s spatial planning system for more than seven decades; the contemporary policy instruments and mechanisms for articulating and implementing policies and proposals at multiple scales; and the formally established procedures for development management. It covers important themes in contemporary spatial planning discourse, including the evolving meaning, scope and purpose of spatial planning globally; the scales of spatial planning (i.e. national, regional, sub-regional and local); multi-level integration within spatial planning; public participation; the interface between urbanization, sustainable growth management and spatial planning; spatial planning and housing development; integrated spatial development and transportation planning; and spatial planning and the urban informal economy. Intended for undergraduate and graduate students, and academic researchers and practitioners/policy-makers in the multidisciplinary field of spatial planning, it appeals to readers seeking an international perspective on spatial planning systems and practices.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of several urban related aspects that are of central importance to successful territorial cohesion processes. In essence, it sheds new light on issues concerning urban polycentrism, functional urban regions, integrated sustainable urban development, and the EU Urban Agenda; and on how they can help to achieve territorial cohesion policy goals. As an elusive and fairly recent concept, territorial cohesion has to date only been vaguely debated in the available literature, which for the most part focuses on its historical origins and its relevance for EU policymaking. Instead, this book synthesizes, for the first time, a range of perspectives that place urban elements and policies at the core of territorial cohesion analysis. As such, and given the fact that territorial cohesion is a holistic concept, the book will appeal to a broad readership from both the academic and policymaking arenas.

This book presents an overview of urban and regional planning in Turkey. It discusses the fundamental topics and contemporary issues in the field. The book is organized in two parts and it includes 14 chapters. Chapter 1 is designed as an introduction defining the framework of urbanisation in Turkey, and the evolution of urban planning providing a background for the remaining chapters. In Part I, contemporary issues of urban and regional planning in Turkey are covered (i.e., new route taken by regional planning, the role of the planner in the process of shaping the urban form of Turkish cities, the specific features of Turkish city centres, large-scale public investments and their effects on urban areas, urban growth of Turkish cities from an urban morphological viewpoint, and problems and recent planning discussions related to the conservation of archaeological heritage). The challenges faced by urban and regional planning in Turkey are discussed in Part II (i.e., major challenges inresidential transformation, excess housing production and the future of housing markets, challenges posed by increasing (global) immigration and refugees, challenges due to integration of a resilience thinking framework into the planning systems, development and planning activities of settlements in hazard prone areas, and the current state of climate policy and governance). In the concluding chapter an overall assessment of the contemporary issues and challenges for urban and regional planning in Turkey is made with special emphasis on the last 15 years of the country. Discussions on the case of Turkey could be useful examples both for developed and developing countries.

The objective of this book is to better understand the nature of urban governance regarding the provision of basic urban services in rapidly growing mid-sized towns and cities in developing countries. Set within the context of understanding urban planning and management within the wider city setting, the study focuses on the provision of the basic urban services of housing, water and sanitation especially within informal settlements. Using the case study of the mid-sized city of Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia, the publication explores: (i) the types, processes, and stakeholders that constitute formal urban governance in the provision of basic urban services; (ii) understanding how stakeholders gain and benefit from ‘on the ground’ formal service arrangements, and why; and (iii) for those who do not directly benefit from the formal arrangements, how individuals, groups and communities organize and access governance to meet their basic urban needs. The methods employed to better understand the nature of urban governance and its relationship to the provision of basic urban services comprised primary (face-to-face household surveys interviewing 448 respondents, ground mapping at a plot size level in four informal settlements, and semi-structured interviews with 12 stakeholders) and secondary data regarding urban governance, planning and management. The study reveals that urban governance arrangements in fast growing mid-sized cities have emerged both formally and informally to cope with basic urban service needs across a range of settlement types and socio-cultural groups. The major modes of governance arrangements in the informal settlements consist of traditional, formal and informal, and hybrid governance which co-evolve as their boundaries overlap and intersect through time at varying levels of ‘equilibrium’. The ‘governance equilibrium’ represents a ‘balance’ at a specific point and place in time in how stakeholders utilize and share resources,and access various contributions.

This open access book explores the formation and socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in Europe. Are these estates clustered or scattered? Which social groups originally had access to residential space in housing estates? What is the size, scale and geography of housing estates, their architectural and built environment composition, services and neighbourhood amenities, and metropolitan connectivity? How do housing estates contribute to the urban mosaic of neighborhoods by ethnic and socio-economic status? What types of policies and planning initiatives have been implemented in order to prevent the social downgrading of housing estates?The collection of chapters in this book addresses these questions from a new perspective previously unexplored in scholarly literature. The social aspects of housing estates are thoroughly investigated (including socio-demographic and economic characteristics of current and past inhabitants; ethnicity and segregation patterns; population dynamics; etc.), and the physical composition of housing estates is described in significant detail (including building materials; building form; architectural and landscape design; built environment characteristics; etc.). This book is timely because the recent global economic crisis and Europe’s immigration crisis demand a thorough investigation of the role large housing estates play in poverty and ethnic concentration. Through case studies of housing estates in 14 European centers, the book also identifies policy measures that have been used to address challenges in housing estates throughout Europe.

This book surveys the historical development, current problems and likely prospects for Eastern Mediterranean port cities, providing contributions from scholars from various disciplines, such as archaeologists, historians, economists, urban planners and architects. By studying the city of Mersin and the surrounding area, it offers insights into the changing nature of Eastern Mediterranean port cities.The first part of the book discusses the approaches to the Mediterranean World, from the late prehistory to the present, and questions the implications of the values inherited from the past for a sustainable future. The second part then examines the social structure of Eastern Mediterranean port cities presenting an in-depth study of different ethnic groups and communities. In the third part the changing physical structure of these cities is elucidated from the perspectives of archaeology, architecture, and urban planning. The last part focuses on urbanmemory through a detailed study based on live recordings of original accounts by the local people. The book benefits prospective researchers in the field of Mediterranean studies, archaeology, history, economic history, architecture and urban planning.

This book presents essential new governance structures to embrace and regulate smart mobility modes. Drawing on a range of case studies, it paves the way for new approaches to governing future transportation systems. Over the past decades, Information and Communication Technologies have enabled the development of new mobility solutions that have completely redefined traditional and well-established urban transportation systems. Urban transportation systems are evolving dramatically, from the development of shared mobility modes, to the advent of electric mobility, and from the automated mobility trend to the rapid spread of integrated transportation schemes. Given the disruptive nature of those new mobility solutions, new governance structures are needed. Through a series of case studies from around the world, this book highlights governance and regulatory processes having supported, or sometimes prevented, the development and implementation ofsmart mobility solutions (shared, automated, electric, integrated).  The combination of chapters offers a comprehensive overview of the different research endeavours focusing on the governance of smart transportation systems and will help pave the way for this important subject, which is crucial for the future of cities.

This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building.

This book presents: 1) an urban-studies panorama on the emergence of a built/landscape continuum following the anthropic expansion at the geographic scale and the consequent demise of the city/country divide; 2) an in-depth theoretical analysis of disparate landscape constructs, culminating in the proposal of a comprehensive spatial paradigm addressing both manmade and natural contexts; 3) the in-situ transcription of the proposed spatial paradigm into a landscape installation implementing a territorial narrative in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico. Foreword by Peter G. Rowe and afterword by Elisa C. Cattaneo.By virtue of its openness, fluidity, and volatility, fluctuating between heterogeneity and diversity, today’s built/landscape continuum exhibits analogies with distinct notions of landscape. The book determines an open-ended classification of contemporary space-making strategies exceeding the urban and metropolitan ambit, through a comparative anatomy of global case studies ranging from hard to soft: geotechnics or applied geographies, machinic micro-ecologies, aesthetic prostheses for operative metabolism, cybernetic utopias, atmospheric assemblages, psychic spheres, creole horizons, semiotic landscapes, geopolitical landscapes, geophilosophical excavations. The proposed spatial paradigm, accommodating aggregates of artificial and living systems, physical and mental spaces, and machinic and cultural landscapes, intends to reconcile the traditionally opposed ‘scientific-cognitive-metabolist’ and ‘cultural-geophilosophical-territorialist’ visions of the landscape. The resulting model transcends the exhausted myths of urban space, metropolitanism, and their filiations, in favor of a new form of urbanity and its attributes. Parts of the work were developed in the frame of research projects of Universidad de Monterrey and Parque Ecológico Chipinque and the IDAUP of UniFE and Polis.The target audience of the book is researchers, teachers, andadvanced students engaged in landscape and urban studies with a prevalent focus on theory. The book can also benefit professional and institutional audiences looking for ethical/methodological orientation.

This book aims to identify the challenges presented by current urban environmental governance practices in fast growing Indian cities, to propose changes to the current governance implementation strategies, and to explore the best practices to achieve sustainable urban models through Indian and global perspectives.

The reader is led through seven chapters: Creative City Berlin, Introduction to Public Art, Public Art in Berlin, the Celebration of Berlin’s 750th Anniversary in 1987, Temporary public art, Socialist Realism in Art, and Urban Memorials.

This book is intended to help explore the field of smart sustainable cities in its complexity, heterogeneity, and breadth, the many faces of a topical subject of major importance for the future that encompasses so much of modern urban life in an increasingly computerized and urbanized world. Indeed, sustainable urban development is currently at the center of debate in light of several ICT visions becoming achievable and deployable computing paradigms, and shaping the way cities will evolve in the future and thus tackle complex challenges.This book integrates computer science, data science, complexity science, sustainability science, system thinking, and urban planning and design. As such, it contains innovative computer–based and data–analytic research on smart sustainable cities as complex and dynamic systems. It provides applied theoretical contributions fostering a better understanding of such systems and the synergistic relationships between the underlying physical and informational landscapes. It offers contributions pertaining to the ongoing development of computer–based and data science technologies for the processing, analysis, management, modeling, and simulation of big and context data and the associated applicability to urban systems that will advance different aspects of sustainability.This book seeks to explicitly bring together the smart city and sustainable city endeavors, and to focus on big data analytics and context-aware computing specifically. In doing so, it amalgamates the design concepts and planning principles of sustainable urban forms with the novel applications of ICT of ubiquitous computing to primarily advance sustainability. Its strength lies in combining big data and context–aware technologies and their novel applications for the sheer purpose of harnessing and leveraging the disruptive and synergetic effects of ICT on forms of city planning that are required for future forms of sustainable development. This is becausethe effects of such technologies reinforce one another as to their efforts for transforming urban life in a sustainable way by integrating data–centric and context–aware solutions for enhancing urban systems and facilitating coordination among urban domains.This timely and comprehensive book is aimed at a wide audience across science, academia industry, and policymaking. It provides the necessary material to inform relevant research communities of the state–of–the–art research and the latest development in the area of smart sustainable urban development, as well as a valuable reference for planners, designers, strategists, and ICT experts who are working towards the development and implementation of smart sustainable cities based on big data analytics and context–aware computing.

This book is about understanding, contextualizing and carrying out critical analyzes of the policies intended and/or implemented by the various public and private actors in urban public spaces, as well as the daily, or eventual, politics exercised by the organized civil society and by citizens.

This book fills an existing academic literature gap by providing a sound and synthetic analysis on the process of European Territorial Cooperation over the last 30 years. This follows from the support from the former EU INTERREG Community Initiative, since 1989, later transformed into the second main goal of EU Cohesion Policy, by 2007: European Territorial Cooperation - ECT. In order to present the ECT process in a more comprehensive manner, and to be the main literature reference regarding this process in the decades to come, this book is divided into four different sections and 12 chapters. The first section summarizes the main impacts and added-value from ETC experiences while proposing the elevation of the ETC goals within EU Cohesion Policies. The second section addresses the process of cross-border cooperation, and namely its impact in reducing border obstacles and supporting ever growing number of cross-border entities. The third section elaborates on the second most important ETC process (transnational cooperation) with a similar approach. Finally, a last section debates the future scenarios for this process in Europe.

This book brings together contributions from some of the foremost international experts in the field of urban morphology and addresses major questions such as: What exactly is urban morphology?

This book discusses the effects of Neo-Liberal policies on the transformations of architectural and urban practices and education in the transition from the era of “professionalism” to “post-professionalism.” Building on previous literature in the field of contemporary theory of architecture, it provides the necessary resources for the study of contemporary architecture and urban politics, urban sociology, local administration and urban geography. Further, it develops a political and critical perspective on contemporary practices of architecture and urbanism, their implementation, legal background, political effects and social results.The book will interest readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, from political science to architecture, and from urban studies to sociology.

This edited collection critically discusses the relevance of, and the potential for identifying conceptual common ground between dominant urban theory projects – namely Neo-Marxian accounts on planetary urbanization and alternative ‘Southern’ post-colonial and post-structuralist projects. Its main objective is to combine different urban knowledge to support and inspire an integrative research approach and a conceptual vocabulary which allows understanding the complex characteristics of diverse emerging urban spaces.Drawing on in-depth case study material from across the world, the different chapters in this volume disentangle planetary urbanization and apply it as a research framework to the context-specific challenges faced by many `ordinary' urban settings. In addition, through their focus on both Northern- and Southern urban spaces, this edited collection creates a truly global perspective on crucial practice-relevant topics such as the co-production of urban spaces, the ‘right to diversity’ and the ‘right to the urban’ in particular local settings.

This edited collection investigates the human dimension of urban renewal, using a range of case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, India and North America, to explore how the conception and delivery of regeneration initiatives can strengthen or undermine local communities.

The goal of the research is to contribute to the enhancement of past cultural heritage renovation and enhancement methods, improve the methods of spatial protection of heritage and contribute to the development of the local community through the use of cultural, and in particular, architectural heritage.

This book examines how non-economic inter- and intra-group relationships were reflected in residential patterns around the first decade of the 21st century in Whitechapel, an old yet attractive absorption neighbourhood in east London, UK. It sheds light on different levels of organisation that shape urban space and suggests an integrated understanding linking socio-cultural-religious norms and the urban environment that could be extrapolated to other cities. It studies core methodologies through joining of detailed, primary empirical research, collected through direct engagement with the communities of interest, with a wider theoretical and modelling framework. This study identifies the main engines of organised neighbourhood change and the difficulties of planning. It deals with individuals in the housing market and sheds light on similar processes occurring in other city centres with diverse population groups.Based on residential records at the resolution of single family and apartment covering a period of 17 years, the study reveals and analyses powerful mechanisms of residential relations at the apartment, building and the near neighbourhood level. Taken together, these revealed mechanisms are candidates for explaining the dynamics of residential segregation in the area during the period 1995 to 2012. Whitechapel's communities are extremely diverse, composed of 27 ethnic and religious groups and sub-groups. The residential preferences of group members are highly affected by the need to live among "friends" – other members of the same group. How is it that the area has been so attractive for so many people to live in, whilst at the same time being so diverse that people cannot achieve their stated preferences to live amongst 'friends'?

This book attempts to advance critical knowledge and practices for fostering a variety of entrepreneurship at a city level.

This book studies the principles of urban spatial organization of historic cities. Considering the comparative aspects of study, the reader will notice that despite cultural differences, there is a common understanding in artistic creativity and sensibility in the presented examples.

This book studies the principles of urban spatial organization of historic cities. Considering the comparative aspects of study, the reader will notice that despite cultural differences, there is a common understanding in artistic creativity and sensibility in the presented examples.

This book approaches the field of built heritage and its practices by employing the concept of heterotopia, established by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The fundamental understandings of heritage, its evolution and practices all reveal intrinsic heterotopic features (the mirror function, its utopic drive, and its enclave-like nature). The book draws on previous interpretations of heterotopia and argues for a reading of heritage as heterotopia, considering various heritage mechanisms – heritage selection, conservation and protection practices, and heritage as mnemonic device – in this regard. Reworking the six heterotopic principles, an analysis grid is designed and applied to various built heritage spaces (vernacular, religious architecture, urban 19th century ensembles). Guided through this theoretical itinerary, the reader will rediscover the heterotopic lens as a minor, yet promising, Foucauldian device that allows for a better understanding of heritage and its everyday practices.

This book examines examples of contemporary situation of historic regions in the Middle East and its broader geographic context connected to the historic trade routes, offering cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral perspectives. The region is home to ancient settlements and early human endeavors to form cities, and across the region historic urban historic features, such as ancient city centers, still exist alongside contemporary ones. Many of those historic regions are along the Silk Roads. However, the urban continuity that once existed over generations in the physical and social paradigm have been interrupted by rapid urbanization, globalization and urban economic pressures, in addition to conflicts and frequent destructive natural hazards. It is often the case that dealing with such pressing issues in a historic city is more complex than dealing with those in newly built cities and urban areas. Based on carefully selected and updated papers from the Silk Cities 2017 International Conference, this book appeals to researches, practitioners and policy makers.

This book examines examples of contemporary situation of historic regions in the Middle East and its broader geographic context connected to the historic trade routes, offering cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral perspectives.

This book discusses the unknown and remote urban experiment of modernist social practices and dreams of a better tomorrow. It describes the history of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative not as a historical relic or a single case study, but instead analyses this working-class social housing estate – in itself an extremely interesting emancipatory project – from the perspective of contemporary urban studies.It focuses on issues related to the power of architecture, architects and the estate residents themselves: the city's performative actions, problems related to the polycentric character of the city authorities, the opportunities of building urban institutions, and social identities and urban common goods. Inspired by the history of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative, the book investigates how the estate residents, assisted by social reformers (today called urban activists), organised the urban space of performative democracy, and how they developed anti-capitalist, urban-survival strategies and created new lifestyles. It also analyses how passive tenants turned into active citizens claiming their right to the city.The inspiring book is intended for researchers in the field of performative studies, urban sociologists, critical urban studies researchers, animators of social life and urban activists.