Progress in Planning最新文献

Faced with acute housing crises, some governments are inclined to strip away the ‘bureaucracy’ of planning, relaxing rules on the scrutiny of planning applications and seeking to accelerate the building of new homes. The planning that remains becomes a ‘client service’ for the development industry – a system of housing licensing that follows on from a basic consideration of legal compliance. Such a system has been introduced in England, rooted in the extension of permitted development rights (PDR) for office-to-residential conversions. This article examines the determinants of housing quality through the conversion process, comparing the deregulated approach to conversion in England with Italy’s regulated approach, set within its zonal planning system. The conclusion drawn, after the examination of case studies, is that good quality housing cannot be delivered from the conversion of buildings without either the retention of strong case-by-case planning control or a much more detailed prescriptive approach to housing standards, which would have halted the majority of recent office-to-residential conversions in England.

Recent decades have seen the emergence of hybrid models of living and working associated typologies. These developments have been analysed from the perspective of different disciplines, each with their own interpretation of this phenomenon. Planning and architecture have addressed hybridization as a specific form of interaction between spatio-functional features (such as mixed use, multi-functionality and flexibility) and social features (such as formal and informal interactions and the spontaneous appropriation of spaces) or have sometimes simply focused on the spatio-functional dimension in urban spaces. Studies from other disciplines (e.g. mobility networks, transportation, sociology and information technology) have shown that hybrid spaces cannot exist without access to digitalization technologies. Such technologies are accelerating hybridization processes. This study examines the complex and layered phenomenon of hybridization as a possible combination of (or interaction between) spatio-functional, social and digital features within the planning debate and related fields. Most of the case studies explored by scholars so far have focused on interactions occurring between residential, social and recreational functions, but working functions are playing an increasingly important role. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the development of new forms of hybridity in cities. As a consequence, the rising use of hybrid (on-site and on-line) working practices, planners, policy makers and stakeholders, as well as scholars, have increasingly discussed the concept of hybridization. In this context, various hybrid typologies of urban spaces have materialized in forms such as new working spaces (NWS) which include co-working spaces, incubators, as well as some cafés and multi-functional public libraries, which have recently provided working spaces. This paper focuses on the evolving concept of hybridity from the planning perspective. Based on five hybrid NWS including their surrounding neighbourhoods in Oslo, it provides empirical evidence for an understanding of the phenomenon that may support the development of hybrid spaces and buildings and develops suggestions for planning strategies.

Capital cities form the focus of a sub-field in urban studies. Much of the literature concerning their planning concentrates on their histories, and on the core precincts in which these cities of power often focus their governmental functions. Lacunae in the capital city literature include little attention to twenty-first century capital city settings in large, complex and expanding city-regions; to recent developments in broader urban literatures/city studies; and to contemporary directions of their planning and emergent futures. This article seeks to contribute to filling these gaps through a comparative study of five national capital city-regions on four continents: those of Delhi, Beijing, Paris, Pretoria and Brasília. The methods applied rest on secondary sources as well as some primary research in each of these city-regions. The article proceeds through a substantial review of literatures on capital cities and relevant urban studies, and sets out a general comparison of the five city-regions historically and in terms of their current features. We then proceed to an examination of present challenges and planning approaches in each city-region in turn. A discursive conclusion explores possibilities for the future and argues that by ‘catching up’ conceptually to contemporary trends, including debates around ‘extended urbanisation’, capital city studies, as a sub-field of urban scholarship, could play a useful role in promoting critique of policy and planning responses.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for decision-support tools to help cities become more resilient to infectious diseases. Through urban design and planning, non-pharmaceutical interventions can be enabled, impelling behaviour change and facilitating the construction of lower risk buildings and public spaces. Computational tools, including computer simulation, statistical models, and artificial intelligence, have been used to support responses to the current pandemic as well as to the spread of previous infectious diseases. Our multidisciplinary research group systematically reviewed state-of-the-art literature to propose a toolkit that employs computational modelling for various interventions and urban design processes. We selected 109 out of 8,737 studies retrieved from databases and analysed them based on the pathogen type, transmission mode and phase, design intervention and process, as well as modelling methodology (method, goal, motivation, focus, and indication to urban design). We also explored the relationship between infectious disease and urban design, as well as computational modelling support, including specific models and parameters. The proposed toolkit will help designers, planners, and computer modellers to select relevant approaches for evaluating design decisions depending on the target disease, geographic context, design stages, and spatial and temporal scales. The findings herein can be regarded as stand-alone tools, particularly for fighting against COVID-19, or be incorporated into broader frameworks to help cities become more resilient to future disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal possible reasons for unfavorable decisions in transit planning that weaken the possibility of increasing transit competitiveness versus the private car. The paper is based upon a qualitative case study of two Norwegian cities that have initiated projects to increase transit competitiveness versus the private car. Interviews and document studies have been conducted and interpreted using existing theories and case studies to determine possible reasons for decisions that are unfavorable for transit competitiveness. In this paper, it is concluded that conflicting politics is the main reason for unfavorable decisions in transit planning. Though the planning practitioners in the transit projects make effort to communicate to the politicians how the conflicting politics are limiting the possibility to increase transit competitiveness versus the private car, this effort has little effect. It is suggested in this work that the role of the urban planner should be extended to not only inform but also awaken a need for more knowledge among politicians and decisionmakers to help prevent unfavorable decisions being made within transit, and urban planning.

In this paper we draw on the findings of a mixed methods research project that has examined the production, regulation, and delivery of housing in London. Our aim is to develop fresh insights into the growing mobilisation of numbers and targets in contemporary planning systems. More specifically, we bring two fields of literature into conversation. First, drawing on recent contributions from Pike et al. (2019) we develop their notion of ‘city statecraft or the art of city government and management of state affairs and relations (p.79). We discuss how and why their framing of contemporary urban governance captures current trends in contemporary cities, including: the financialisation of housing and infrastructure; the rolling-out of delivery-focused public private partnerships; and the broader political projects that underpin planning priorities. The paper combines these insights with wider writings in urban studies on virtualism or the analysis of theories and governmental practices that seek to make the world conform to pre-existing ideas, rather than describing and explaining its formation. We argue that target-based forms of governance represent the implementation of a virtual statecraft in which the material realities of actual places become simulated worlds, ripe for calculation and re-making. We show, through in-depth research on housing regulation and investment/development trends in London, the ways in which virtual forms of statecraft are developed and implemented and with what effects on the material outcomes of urban development processes. The findings are of comparative significance as planning systems across Europe and beyond are becoming increasingly focused on market-oriented oriented forms of planning in an effort to boost the production of housing and to deliver social policy outcomes.

The public interest has traditionally been a key reason for the legitimacy of planning. Although planning theory and practice are always shaped by a particular understanding of the public interest, it is a concept that is decidedly hard to define. Over the past century, from the beginning of modern planning to the present, various theoretical traditions of thinking about the public interest have emerged. In the course of this debate, the public interest as the normative content of planning has lost significance to the point of meaningless concepts. Many attempts have been made to revive the concept, but no studies have yet been conducted to explore and describe schools of thought in planning related to the public interest. In this study, using a meta-theory approach and emphasizing the similarities of previous classifications, we present comprehensive coalitions of the conceptions of public interest in planning as distinct schools of thought. In order to organize in a complex and diverse body of literature, we link these conceptions of public interest with relevant planning theories. In order to understand the evolution of these schools of thought, we traced their origin using a genealogical approach. As a result of applying this meta-theory approach, we arrive at a framework that consists of five different schools of thought. We distinguish utilitarian, justice-oriented, communicative, and elitist schools of thought in the mainstream of planning thought and one emerging school in the global south. Identifying these schools of thought contributes, on the one hand, to a clear understanding of how the public interest is defined and applied in planning theory and, on the other hand, helps theorists and professionals to expand the available knowledge base to understand the interwoven concepts of the public interest and planning.

The article describes and reflects upon how multi-level governance and planning in Sweden have been affected by and reacted upon three pending major challenges confronting humanity, namely climate change, migration and the Covid-19 pandemic. These ‘crises’ are broadly considered ‘existential threats’ in need of ‘securitisation’. Causes and adequate reactions are contested, and there are no given solutions how to securitise the perceived threats, neither one by one, no less together. Government securitisation strategies are challenged by counter-securitisation demands, and plaguing vulnerable groups in society by in-securitising predicaments. Taking Sweden as an example the article applies an analytical approach drawing upon strands of securitisation, governance and planning theory. Targeting policy responses to the three perceived crises the intricate relations between government levels, responsibilities, capacities, and actions are scrutinized, including a focus upon the role of planning. Overriding research questions are: How has the governance and planning system – central, regional and local governments - in Sweden responded to the challenges of climate change, migration and Covid-19? What threats were identified? What solutions were proposed? What consequences could be traced? What prospects wait around the corner? Comparing crucial aspects of the crises’ anatomies the article adds to the understanding of the way multilevel, cross-sectional, hybrid governance and planning respond to concurrent crises, thereby also offering clues for action in other geopolitical contexts. The article mainly draws upon recent and ongoing research on manifestations of three cases in the Swedish context. Applying a pragmatic, methodological approach combining elements of securitisation, governance and planning theories with Carol Lee Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem represented to be’ and a touch of interpretive/narrative theory, the study reveals distinct differences between the anatomies of the three crises and their handling. Urgency, extension, state of knowledge/epistemology, governance and planning make different imprints on crises management. Sweden’s long-term climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies imply slow, micro-steps forward based on a combination of social-liberal, ‘circular’ and a touch of ‘green growth’ economies. Migration policy displays a Janus face, on the one hand largely respecting the UN refugee quota system on the other hand applying a detailed regulatory framework causing severe insecurity especially for minor refugees wanting to stay and make their living in Sweden. The Covid-19 outbreak revealed a lack of foresight and eroded/fragmented responsibility causing huge stress upon personnel in elderly and health care and appalling death rates among elderly patients, although governance and planning slowly adapted through securitising policies, leading to potential de-securitisation of the issue. The three crises have cause