Urban Design International最新文献

The proliferation of cities has brought numerous challenges, contributing to a deterioration of its inhabitants’ quality of life and liveability. To address these challenges, this paper advocates for a planning approach that prioritises inhabitants’ concerns. It introduces the concept of liveability as a philosophy to tackle urban challenges and proposes identifying priority factors for urban development and investment. This study is focused on Colombo, Sri Lanka, an economic capital in South Asia, investigating all of its nine local authorities through a questionnaire survey and document reviews. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) facilitated data collection and pairwise comparisons of liveability factors. This study identifies six liveability characteristics, 25 attributes, and 71 indicators for prioritisation. The study finds that a balanced socio-economic environment is the most important characteristic, and safety is the most prioritised attribute. In terms of implications, the participatory approach employed in this study enables government authorities to efficiently formulate policies that enhance urban services and liveability. The study pioneers a context-specific approach to measuring liveability in urban settings, particularly in the South Asian region, offering invaluable guidance to urban planners and decision-makers grappling with the challenges of urbanisation and striving to improve liveability in similar settings.

Abstract

The term ‘co-production’ has been used in various fields, including planning, as collaborative forms of public goods and service delivery gain significance. Co-production has two sides—the ‘co’ side refers to actors and their motivations, while the ‘production’ side refers to phases and instruments. This paper examines privately owned public space/s (POPS) based on the two sides of co-production. Thereby, it addresses two research gaps. First, less has been written to date on the involvement of actors other than local authorities and developers. Second, little attention has been paid to the phase through which POPS are co-produced. The paper fills these research gaps by presenting the empirical work undertaken in HafenCity, Hamburg. It reveals a wide range of actors engaged in four different phases through various instruments. This paper also identifies challenges of co-production of POPS, and makes recommendations.

The design of urban public space is inherently problematic because the range of its possible uses and meanings is broad and unpredictable. This paper engages this problematic through the lens of Gibson’s theory of ‘affordances’—the ways the material world affords for human desires. We first explore some conceptual and methodological problems of the theory of affordances and its application in understanding and designing public space. These dimensions of affordance theory are then reconceived using the relational thinking of assemblage and actor-network theory (ANT). A key contribution of the paper is an expanded typology of affordances which includes improvised and serendipitous affordances that extend beyond the intentions of designers and users. This opens new ways of thinking about the design of urban public space as a space of possibility where outcomes are open, multiple, and unpredictable. The paper suggests how urban spaces can be shaped to better support rich cultural diversity and social inclusion.

This study investigates the reliability of microscale walkability assessment by analysing the correspondence of the evaluations obtained using three different street-auditing tools, which are similar from a methodological perspective and regarding time consumption. The comparison of the evaluation of 1314 street segments—from a wide range of urban fabrics in Toledo, Spain—shows low consensus between the three audits. This research explores the reasons behind this and offers a comparative understanding of the examined tools. The paper describes their limitations, highlights the need for further research into the relationship between the streetscape and pedestrian mobility, and calls for more context-specific auditing tools.

This study investigates the reliability of microscale walkability assessment by analysing the correspondence of the evaluations obtained using three different street-auditing tools, which are similar from a methodological perspective and regarding time consumption. The comparison of the evaluation of 1314 street segments—from a wide range of urban fabrics in Toledo, Spain—shows low consensus between the three audits. This research explores the reasons behind this and offers a comparative understanding of the examined tools. The paper describes their limitations, highlights the need for further research into the relationship between the streetscape and pedestrian mobility, and calls for more context-specific auditing tools.