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Books > Earth & environment > Regional & area planning > General
In Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre put forward his ideas on the relationship between time and space, particularly how rhythms characterize space. Here, leading geographers advance and expand on Lefebvre's theories, examining how they intersect with current theoretical and political concerns within the social sciences. In terms of geography, rhythmanalysis highlights tensions between repetition and innovation, between the need for consistency and the need for disruption. These tensions reveal the ways in which social time is managed to ensure a measure of stability through the instantiation of temporal norms, whilst at the same time showing how this is often challenged. In looking at the rhythms of geographies, and drawing upon a wide range of geographical contexts, this book explores the ordering of different rhythms according to four main themes: rhythms of nature, rhythms of everyday life, rhythms of mobility, and the official and routine rhythms which superimpose themselves on the multiple rhythms of the body.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers working on a wide variety of cities throughout Asia, Latin America and Europe, this book addresses, rethinks and, in some cases, abandons the notions of formal and informal urbanism. This collection critically interrogates both the ways in which 'informal' and 'formal' are put to work in the governing and politicisation of cities, and their conceptual strengths and weaknesses. It does so by focusing on a wide variety of topics, from specific forms of housing and labour often traditionally linked to the formal/informal divide, to urban political negotiations, cultural practices, and ways of being in the city. The book takes stock of and reflects on how contemporary urban informality/formality relations are being produced and are/might be understood, and puts forward an enlarged and comprehensive understanding of urban informality.
While ecosystem management requires looking beyond specific jurisdiction and focusing on broad spatial scales, most planning decisions particularly in the USA, are made at local level. By looking at land-use planning in Florida, this volume recognizes the need for planners and resource managers to address ecosystem problems at local and community levels. The factors causing ecosystem decline, such as rapid urban development and habitat fragmentation occur at the local level and are generated by local land use policies. This book argues that understanding how local jurisdictions can capture and implement the principles of managing natural systems will lead to more sustainable levels of environmental planning in the future.
By improving our understanding of how the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage are correlated, we could develop a relationship with heritage that goes beyond the mere act of conservation. This book argues that we need to recognize the historic monument as a tangible aspect of a holistic expression of culture that is rooted in specific spatio-temporal conditions. However, since the latter are constantly changing, it is vital to identify an implicit contradiction with the goals of conservation. As the intangible dimensions are more dynamic, driven by the transmission, reception, and advancement of knowledge, the reliance of the prevailing treatment of heritage today, conservation, ossifies this relationship. By examining three major heritage monuments - the Pantheon, Teotihuacan's Sun Pyramid and Alhambra - the book shows how these sites are the product of multiple strategies and unforeseen agents, accumulated through history. It emphasizes how these historical trends need to be better understood in order to attain a more 'organic' relationship with heritage and offers some recommendations that should be analyzed in participative processes of deliberation: the Pantheon's continuity could be extended; the Pyramid's loss, accepted; and Alhambra's exclusion, reversed. In this way, the book invites people to engage heritage from a historical understanding that is open to critical reassessment, dialogue, and cooperation.
The City has long been the main generator of London's wealth and, needless to say, the impact of the Economic Crisis in the recent years on the City has greatly affected the wider urban and surrounding region, not to say country as a whole. This book examines the impact of the recession and discusses London's future trajectory as an entrepreneurial city and capital of the United Kingdom. While recognising the enduring capacity of London to 'reinvent' itself - from being the centre of a vast Empire to becoming a global centre for financial and business services - contributors evaluate different dimensions of the city's current and future development through analyses derived from sociological, economic, cultural and urban studies perspectives.
Recent years have seen sustained public debate and controversy over the 'greening' of European cities, associated with the environmental movement, pressures of urban redevelopment, and the promotional strategies of cities competing in a global market. But the European debate over urban green space has a long history dating back to Victorian concerns for the 'green lungs' of the city to combat the health and social problems caused by rapid population and industrial growth. This book explores the multiplicity of green space developments in the modern city - ranging over parks and commons, garden suburbs and the cities in the park, allotment gardens, green belts and national urban parks. It is concerned not only with the different types of green space but the many influences shaping their evolution, from international planning ideas, to the rise of modern-day sport and leisure, and the effects of the transport revolution. No less vital in this story is the interaction of the many actors involved in the often fractious political process of creating green spaces - architects and planners, politicians, developers and other businessmen, NGOs and local residents. This volume is particularly concerned with contexts: how international planning ideas are transmitted and adapted in different European cities; how the construction of green space is affected by local power structures and relationships; and how ordinary people perceive and use green spaces, quite often at variance with official designs. The European City and Green Space looks at these and other issues through the prism of four metropoles - London, Stockholm, Helsinki and St Petersburg. All represent different types of North European city, yet each has experienced distinctive economic, political and cultural trajectories, whilst also facing powerful challenges and problems of similar kinds with regard to green space. This volume examines how each has responded to them and what patterns emerge.
Cityscapes in History: Creating the Urban Experience explores the ways in which scholars from a variety of disciplines - history, history of art, geography and architecture - think about and study the urban environment. The concept 'cityscapes' refers to three different dynamics that shape the development of the urban environment: the interplay between conscious planning and organic development, the tension between social control and its unintended consequences and the relationship between projection and self-presentation, as articulated through civic ceremony and ritual. The book is structured around three sections, each covering a particular aspect of the urban experience. 'The City Planned' looks at issues related to agency, self-perception, the transfer of knowledge and the construction of space. 'The City Lived' explores the experience of urbanity and the construction of space as a means of social control. And finally, 'The City as a Stage' examines the ways in which cultural practices and power-relations shape - and are in turn shaped by - the construction of space. Each section combines the work of scholars from different fields who examine these dynamics through both theoretical essays and empirical research, and provides a coherent framework in which to assess a wide range of chronological and geographical subjects. Taken together the essays in this volume provide a truly interdisciplinary investigation of the urban phenomenon. By making fascinating connections between such seemingly diverse topics as 15th century France and modern America, the collection raises valuable questions about scholarly approaches to urban studies.
Focussing particularly on urban fringe and rural areas, this book addresses the parallel phenomena of growth and decline. In doing so, it not only broadens a debate which generally concentrates on urban municipalities, especially inner city areas, but also covers new ground by starting to build a new theoretical framework for the spatial planning related assessment of these phenomena. Bringing together contributions from internationally renowned authors, such as Sir Peter Hall, Steve Ward and Johann Jessen, the book compares international case studies and highlights their relationships with one another. It concludes by emphasizing common themes that are addressed, as well as showing applicability to other urban and rural regions. Overall, the book provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the spatial consequences and related spatial planning concepts in theory and practice which aim to further sustainable development of city regions, urban fringe and rural areas experiencing growth and decline.
The advent of the 21st century marks the unfolding of a new urbanism, of a new urban fabric in the making. Bringing together a range of leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection examines innovative urban redevelopment projects around Europe and North America which are at the forefront of this new urbanism and which are here termed 'New Downtowns'. It introduces this term and concept and addresses major questions such as: What does a sustained urbanity for the 21st century look like? Which strategies do politicians and planners deploy to create new synergies between planning for the public good and private interest? Can market forces be co-opted for collective interests? Does the imagination of a European city continue to inspire new urbanism within and beyond Europe? And can a future urbanity for the 21st century be planned at all? In particular, it focuses on Hamburg's HafenCity", which, at around 155 hectares, is one of the most prominent city centre development projects in Europe and will increase the size of Hamburg's city centre by 40 percent. The project HafenCity serves as a starting point for a conceptually wide ranging debate on the character, shape, function and meaning of New Downtowns.
The governance and evaluation of 'megaprojects' - that is, large-scale, complex, high-stakes infrastructure projects usually commissioned by governments and delivered through partnerships between public and private organisations - is receiving increased attention. However, megaproject evaluation has hitherto largely adopted a linear-rationalist perspective to explain the frequent failure of such projects to meet the 'iron triangle' of performance criteria: delivering on time, within budget, and according to specifications. This approach recommends greater control and accountability to remedy megaproject 'pathologies'. Drawing on empirical examples mainly from the transport sector and radioactive waste disposal, this book offers new perspectives to megaproject evaluation. Comprising contributions from leading experts in project evaluation and appraisal, this collection opens up new avenues by suggesting two ways of improving megaproject evaluation: 1) approaches that go beyond the dominant linearrationalist notion of policy processes, and emphasise instead the objective of opening up appraisal processes in order to enhance learning and reflexivity; and 2) approaches that extend evaluative criteria beyond the 'iron triangle', to cover the various socioeconomic impacts and preconditions for project success. This volume will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in megaprojects, energy and climate policy, radioactive waste management, urban design, and project planning and management.
There is increasing appreciation in the social sciences that context is an important element in understanding social, economic, cultural, political and demographic processes. An important element in context is the type of settlement in which people live and work and so, it is vital to be able to categorise people into particular settlements types. This book brings together a leading team of social scientists to present the latest information on urbanization around the world, highlighting examples of development patterns that are not adequately captured by the UN's type of reporting systems and drawing attention to other ways of representing current trends.
By examining a range of experiences from both the north and south of Ireland, this book asks what the ideal of sustainable development might mean to specific rural groups and how sustainable development goals have been pursued across the policy spectrum. It assesses the extent of commitment to a living countryside in Ireland and compares various opportunities and obstacles to the actual achievement of sustainable rural development. How different sectors of rural society will be challenged in terms of future survival provides an overarching theme throughout.
An estimated 600 million people now live in informal or 'squatter' settlements in the rapidly growing cities of the developing world. With such settlements often lacking basic necessities, there is an urgent need to address this urban crisis. Recently, innovative approaches have focused on the role of community-based organizations (CBOs) in setting up self-help and participatory programmes. This incisive book questions whether communities have the ability to organize, engage government and undertake major redevelopment. It also examines when and how mobilization of communities occurs and if such organizations possess any influence in the intensely political decision-making arena of urban land development. It is illustrated by a detailed analysis of the experience of CBOs in Manila, as the Philippine government has undertaken what is perhaps the most radical experiment in decentralized, participatory approaches to urban governance in the world. The book emphasizes the external conditions that influence patterns of collective action within communities and addresses issues such as the local political economy and the communities' place within the global economy.
Environment and Society explores ways to promote the behavioural shifts necessary for creating a 'sustainable society'. Through a critical approach to the links between sustainability, policy and citizen engagement, the book argues that sustainability policy needs to move towards a positive perspective, utilizing the well-known techniques of segmentation and social marketing. Such 'mainstreaming' of sustainable lifestyles is likely to be the only effective means of engaging the majority of citizens in the environmental debate, given the major influence of the consumer society on individual aspirations and beliefs. Comprised of three substantive elements, Environment and Society explores the context for behaviour change policy, the approaches adopted by politicians and academic researchers, and the application of such approaches using empirical data from two major research projects. The book is richly illustrated using both theoretical and empirical data and provides an excellent companion to all researchers interested in sustainable lifestyles.
As we move further into the 21st century, the prominence of regions can no longer be taken for granted. A certain skepticism has developed with regard to the feasibility of marginal regions achieving self-sustained growth and states have maintained their role as regulators of economic and social activities. Thus, the notion of the region and its significance is currently much debated and contested. Illustrated with a wide range of European case studies, this volume brings together the main strands of these contestations, as economic, political and social actors attempt to institutionalise their vision of their region as the dominant form of territorial governance. It questions both the external delimitation and the internal constitution of regions and critically analyses the societal processes circumscribing ways in which regions are created, maintained and undermined. The volume provides a wide range of analytical perspectives to enable an understanding of the current mosaic of regionalism in Europe.
The concept of governance has evolved into one of the most important but also controversial concepts in urban politics. While it encourages co-operation, participation and collective construction, at the same time, it has brought about new forms of public demission, oligarchic regimes and less local democracy. The dilemmas accompanying these changes are particularly relevant when observing the cities of Southern Europe, whose socio-cultural specificities very much structure local political and policy materialisations. Bringing together a team of leading scholars from across the social sciences, this volume examines the issues of urban governance in the Southern European context. Illustrated by case studies of several main cities and metropoles on the North Mediterranean coast, it introduces and critically analyses the latest theories and approaches to urban governance. It questions how the 'real' or socio-cultural notion of city seems to have been separated from that of the 'political' city and explores how more integrated socio-political forms might be developed. It looks at current structures, dynamics and cultures of governance in urban development and questions whether they are well adapted to new realities and challenges or whether there are significant imbalances causing limited or fragmented political-administrative visions. By considering both the long Mediterranean history along with the recent but enduring global economic and political developments, this book argues that Southern European cities will have to depend greatly upon its own socio-cultural networks, dynamics and cosmopolitan evolution, making the most of the region's characteristic urban strengths, as trading hubs, with rich hinterlands and large and varied population.
The environmental legacy of past industrial and agricultural development can simultaneously pose serious threats to human health and impede reuse of contaminated land. The urban landscape around the world is littered with sites contaminated with a variety of toxins produced by past use. Both public and private sector actors are often reluctant to make significant investments in properties that simultaneously pose significant potential human health issues, and may demand complex and very expensive cleanups. The chapters in this volume recognize that land and water contamination are now almost universally acknowledged to be key social, economic, and political issues. How multiple societies have attempted to craft and implement public policy to deal with these issues provides the central focus of the book. The volume is unique in that it provides a global comparative perspective on brownfield policy and examples of its use in a variety of countries.
Throughout the world, the number of festivals has grown exponentially in the last two decades, as people celebrate local and regional cultures, but perhaps more importantly as local councils and other groups seek to use festivals both to promote tourism and to stimulate rural development. However, most studies of festivals have tended to focus almost exclusively on the cultural and symbolic aspects, or on narrow modelling of economic multiplier impacts, rather than examining their long-term implications for rural change. This book therefore has an original focus. It is structured in two parts: the first discusses broad issues affecting music festivals globally, especially in the context of rural revitalisation. The second part looks in more detail at a range of types of festivals commonly found throughout North America, Europe and Australasia, such as country music, jazz, opera and alternative music festivals. The authors draw on in-depth research undertaken over the past five years in a range of Australian places, which traces the overall growth of festivals of various kinds, examines four of the more important and distinctive music festivals, and makes clear conclusions on their significance for rural and regional change.
Back in the 1980s Jean Baudrillard wrote that public space was collapsing due to a double obscenity: 'The most intimate operation of your life becomes the potential grazing ground of the media....The entire universe also unfolds unnecessarily on your home screen.' He termed this the ecstasy of communication. But today, your everyday life is not just the potential grazing ground of the media, but of anyone with a camera, and the entire universe unfolds not just at home but in the palm of your hand virtually anywhere you travel. Bringing together a transdisciplinary team of leading scholars and artists from North America, Europe and Asia, this volume documents and theorizes this new visibility. It focuses on the proliferation of a range of new visual technologies, examining questions of subjectivity, agency, and surveillance as well as mapping and theorizing new practices of visuality within this new visual assemblage. New Visualities, New Technologies addresses the pressing need for the conceptual understanding of new forms of seeing, looking, presenting, and hiding.
Charting new research directions, this book constructs a series of imperatives for linking culturally informed research around household sustainability with policy and planning. The household, or 'home', is a critical scale for understanding activities that connect individual behaviours and societal attitudes. The focus on the household in this collection provides a window into the sheer diversity of homemaking and maintenance activities that entail resource use. These practices have affective or emotive dimensions as well as habitual aspects. Diversity, innovation and change at the household scale is often missed in policy approaches which assume that simplistic economic motivations drive demand and this can in turn be 'managed' through regulation or market pricing. The research challenge extends beyond describing existing unsustainable economies driving resource intensive behaviour to consider realistic options for transformations in cultural practices, material relationships and, ultimately, the political economies they sit within. Without change in these systems, government initiatives to promote ecological modernisation run the risk of simply green-washing the very economies of consumption that currently drive unsustainable practices. Social and cultural change at the household level is critical to promoting sustainability at a range of wider scales.
Bringing together a multidisciplinary team of scholars, this book explores the importance of ethnicity and cultural economy in the post-Fordist city in the Americas. It argues that cultural, political and economic elites make use of cultural and ethnic elements in city planning and architecture in order to construct a unique image of a particular city and demonstrates how the use of ethnicized cultural production - such as urban branding based on local identities - by the economic elite raises issues of considerable concern in terms of local identities, as it deploys a practical logic of capital exchange that can overcome forms of cultural resistance and strengthen the hegemonic colonization of everyday life. At the same time, it shows how ethnic communities are able to use ethnic labelling of cultural production, ethnic economy or ethno-tourism facilities in order to change living conditions and to empower its members in ways previously impossible. Of wide ranging interest across academic disciplines, this book will be a useful contribution to Inter-American studies.
Bringing together a diverse team of leading scholars and professionals, this book offers a variety of insights into ongoing gender mainstreaming policies in Europe with a focus on urban/spatial planning. Gender mainstreaming was first legislated for in the European Union with the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999 and, although many interesting developments have occurred throughout the decade that followed, there is still much to do in terms of policy, knowledge production, dissemination and education. This work contributes to all three objectives, by advancing the state of knowledge, as well as providing educational and professional tools in the field of gender sensitive planning in Europe. The volume begins by explaining the concept of gender mainstreaming in relation to its origins in the 'second wave' of the women's movement and critiques of planning, architecture, transport planning and other built environment disciplines. It then provides a brief history of how gender mainstreaming was incorporated into European law, before focussing on the theoretical issues and questions that surround the concept of gender mainstreaming as they relate to urban space and the planning of cities and regions, including a discussion of the persistence of inequalities between the sexes in their access to urban space and services. In particular, the division between waged and unwaged work and its impact on the social construction of gender and of the physical built environment is considered. The differences between definitions of feminism and their implications for action in planning and design are also explored, paying regard to the tensions between a feminist vision of a transformation of gender relations and the requirements of gender mainstreaming to accommodate the different needs of women and men in their everyday lives in urban space. Throughout the book, key issues recur, such as the importance of time and space in the experience of urbanism, resistances to change on the part of institutions and social structures, and the importance of networks. Education and training also appear as common themes, as do citizen participation and the structures of governance. The chapters are organised into four sections: concepts, structures, empowerment and spatial quality. Contributors demonstrate a variety of approaches to the intersections of gender, women, cities, and planning, dealing with substantive and procedural issues in planning, at both local and regional scales. They stress the links between environmental sustainability and gender-sensitive urban development. The book concludes by putting forward an outlook for future action.
Charting the development of the travel plan as a concept, this book draws on a range of research-based contributions to determine the state-of-the-art and to explore a series of future scenarios in this area for practitioners and policy makers. Site-based mobility management or 'travel plans' address the transport problem by engaging with those organisations such as employers that are directly responsible for generating the demand for travel, and hence have the potential to have a major impact on transport policy. To do this effectively however, travel plans need to be reoriented to be made more relevant to the needs of these organisations, whilst the policy framework in which they operate needs modifying to better support their diffusion and enhance their effectiveness. Marcus Enoch breaks down the travel plan concept into four axes related to its development (namely segment, scale, structure and support), and investigates the following questions: - What makes them special? - Why are they introduced? - What do they look like in terms of their design and the measures they use? - How common are they and in what sectors and location types? - How effective are they? - What barriers do they face and how might these be overcome?
There has been a profound change within the sphere of government and societal regulation in recent years. Traditional hierarchical government has been challenged by new governance instruments relying on negotiations instead of command and control. Alongside this development there has been a change in the time-framing of politics and steering. Traditional politics implicitly has been based on stability and permanence while new forms of governance explicitly are based on just-in-time actions such as projects and issue-based collaborations in networks and programs. This book analyses the implications of this shortening of time frames, focusing particularly on spatial policy interventions. Spatial policies have a special relevance when it comes to governance and new forms of societal steering. On the one hand, the local (geographical) level in politics is the principal battleground for the struggle between top down and bottom up approaches and aspirations. On the other hand, many of the most burning issues of our time require a global, strategic approach, for example, climate change, resource depletion, population growth are anchored in space and the physical world. Whether and how short-term spatial approaches can achieve sustainable development outcomes is thus a critical question, and forms the focus of this volume. The book examines the characteristics of temporary policy measures across a range of rural, urban and regional contexts, in four continents: Europe, North America, Oceania and Africa. The outcomes and effects of these policies and interventions are analysed, particularly focusing on the tension between short-term interventions and long-term effects.
In recent years, Dutch environmental policy has undergone some pivotal changes, the most significant of which have been decentralization and deregulation, encouraging local communities to develop and deliver policies which are tailor-made to their particular situation. These changes have led to the development of some innovative practical instruments for aiding sustainable environmental spatial policy. This book discusses these new 'methods for environmental externalities' and their significance in the development and delivery of Dutch environmental policies, particularly how they ensure that issues such as health and hygiene are introduced in the early stages of spatial planning processes. This book highlights the most prominent and relevant of these innovative 'methods for environmental externalities' as well as comparing them with some of the classic methods, and analysing strengths and weaknesses. It argues that having such a broad and varied choice of methods is the key to ensuring the impressive and groundbreaking Dutch creativity in environmental management. In conclusion, the book extrapolates current trends in environmental policy, expresses likely and possible developments in 'methods for environmental externalities' and shows how such methods can contribute in our ongoing attempts to develop and deliver liveable, pleasant and sustainable towns and cities. |
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