Academics have often contributed to designing, running, and evaluating participatory events with publics on climate action. Whilst climate assemblies are perhaps the most well-known of such events, there is also a proliferation of smaller and more local projects suggesting scope for reflection on the role of academic researchers in this evolving space. We deploy an experimental methodology that blends personal reflections with group discussion amongst the authors to help unpack the lessons learned from a project led by the local council, where we facilitated the involvement of local people in decision-making around climate action. Reflecting on our individual and academic positionalities, we question the extent to which we are well placed to build, maintain, and sustain trust, which requires spending time in place, continuity, and ceding power. As “outsiders” with “elite connotations,” our role as actors in this space is open for discussion. Indeed, our involvement could be perceived as a missed opportunity to retain more money and knowledge locally by ceding more responsibility to grassroots organisations. Our experience also suggests that framing public participation in terms of design and facilitation deficit is somewhat misleading. It is not just a process that needs to be attuned to diverse communities, but an ongoing relationship that needs certain enabling conditions to flourish, including conducive funding frameworks and a willingness to address incumbent power differentials between state and non-state actors.
{"title":"Participatory Climate Action: Reflections on Community Diversity and the Role of External Experts","authors":"Connor Smith, Finlay Bain-Kerr, Dan van der Horst","doi":"10.17645/up.8182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.8182","url":null,"abstract":"Academics have often contributed to designing, running, and evaluating participatory events with publics on climate action. Whilst climate assemblies are perhaps the most well-known of such events, there is also a proliferation of smaller and more local projects suggesting scope for reflection on the role of academic researchers in this evolving space. We deploy an experimental methodology that blends personal reflections with group discussion amongst the authors to help unpack the lessons learned from a project led by the local council, where we facilitated the involvement of local people in decision-making around climate action. Reflecting on our individual and academic positionalities, we question the extent to which we are well placed to build, maintain, and sustain trust, which requires spending time in place, continuity, and ceding power. As “outsiders” with “elite connotations,” our role as actors in this space is open for discussion. Indeed, our involvement could be perceived as a missed opportunity to retain more money and knowledge locally by ceding more responsibility to grassroots organisations. Our experience also suggests that framing public participation in terms of design and facilitation deficit is somewhat misleading. It is not just a process that needs to be attuned to diverse communities, but an ongoing relationship that needs certain enabling conditions to flourish, including conducive funding frameworks and a willingness to address incumbent power differentials between state and non-state actors.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141828326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shrinking cities and degrowth thinking share their parting from the dominant growth paradigm and seem to have much to offer to each other. Could degrowth be an inspiring and guiding paradigm for the sustainable development of shrinking cities? Could shrinking cities be suitable testing grounds to apply degrowth’s radical sustainability principles in practice? These and other questions regarding the connections between urban shrinkage, degrowth, and sustainability have hardly been addressed in the scientific literature thus far. This thematic issue brings together novel empirical contributions, taking stock of first attempts to connect degrowth to urban shrinkage, exploring in how far this potential unfolds in practice and what obstacles these attempts face, with a focus on the field of urban planning. In this editorial, we discuss the connections between shrinking cities, degrowth, and sustainability identified in the empirical studies and the dialogues that span across these contributions. We conclude with an updated research agenda for this field of study.
{"title":"Urban Shrinkage, Degrowth, and Sustainability: An Updated Research Agenda","authors":"J. de Kraker, Christian Scholl, Marco Bontje","doi":"10.17645/up.8815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.8815","url":null,"abstract":"Shrinking cities and degrowth thinking share their parting from the dominant growth paradigm and seem to have much to offer to each other. Could degrowth be an inspiring and guiding paradigm for the sustainable development of shrinking cities? Could shrinking cities be suitable testing grounds to apply degrowth’s radical sustainability principles in practice? These and other questions regarding the connections between urban shrinkage, degrowth, and sustainability have hardly been addressed in the scientific literature thus far. This thematic issue brings together novel empirical contributions, taking stock of first attempts to connect degrowth to urban shrinkage, exploring in how far this potential unfolds in practice and what obstacles these attempts face, with a focus on the field of urban planning. In this editorial, we discuss the connections between shrinking cities, degrowth, and sustainability identified in the empirical studies and the dialogues that span across these contributions. We conclude with an updated research agenda for this field of study.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141657929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Governments have developed, agreed, and often embraced ambitious targets to meet sustainability and climate change demands. The use of land is foundational for long-term success and one of the most crucial resources where absolute limits of development become tangible. In Europe, success in stopping the expansion of settlement uses through building on natural or agricultural land remains limited in scope and speed. While planning instruments could be open for versatile uses, a pro-growth pathway continues at all planning scales. The premise of this article is that growth fixation is inscribed in planning instruments. We build on post-growth planning literature to conceptualize the relevance of (post-)growth for land-use planning. Two examples of planning instruments (modelling regional land use needs, density concepts) and their application in German case studies illustrate wherein growth has been locked and within which potentials for change lie. We investigate inscribed premises of the causal relation between population and household growth to land consumption that are leading to a divergence between the need for land and the provision of land. By doing so, we position post-growth planning to understand contemporary challenges in reducing the net consumption of land, and as a crucial body of thought that better accounts for the tangible limits of available land.
{"title":"Post-Growth Ambitions and Growth-Based Realities in Sustainable Land-Use Planning","authors":"C. Lamker, Thomas Terfrüchte","doi":"10.17645/up.7881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7881","url":null,"abstract":"Governments have developed, agreed, and often embraced ambitious targets to meet sustainability and climate change demands. The use of land is foundational for long-term success and one of the most crucial resources where absolute limits of development become tangible. In Europe, success in stopping the expansion of settlement uses through building on natural or agricultural land remains limited in scope and speed. While planning instruments could be open for versatile uses, a pro-growth pathway continues at all planning scales. The premise of this article is that growth fixation is inscribed in planning instruments. We build on post-growth planning literature to conceptualize the relevance of (post-)growth for land-use planning. Two examples of planning instruments (modelling regional land use needs, density concepts) and their application in German case studies illustrate wherein growth has been locked and within which potentials for change lie. We investigate inscribed premises of the causal relation between population and household growth to land consumption that are leading to a divergence between the need for land and the provision of land. By doing so, we position post-growth planning to understand contemporary challenges in reducing the net consumption of land, and as a crucial body of thought that better accounts for the tangible limits of available land.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141658119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By critically reflecting on the concept of “post-socialist neoliberalism” proposed by this thematic issue, we argue against the widely assumed hegemony of neoliberalism, not just in the post-socialist context, but anywhere. We suggest taking features that do not fit in the narratives of neoliberalism seriously and highlighting more-than-neoliberal rationales, too. We present cases from the literature focusing on post-socialist and illiberal contexts, especially in Hungary. As the critical reading of the literature and the secondary and primary data about Hungary shows, narratives of capitalist class domination and accumulation can be less than adequate. The maintenance of clientelist or neopatrimonial relations dominated by political power with politically created rents is a separate issue. Therefore, instead of assuming “in the last instance” determination by neoliberalism, which is only camouflaged with theoretically irrelevant contextual issues, we argue for the examination of neopatrimonial relations besides neoliberalism to better understand the mechanisms behind urban development. In doing so, we can explain how power is maintained without actual development, how corruption as a mode of rule is politically accepted, and why political struggles need to consider other aspects besides fighting capitalist class domination.
{"title":"Captured by Political Power: More-Than-Neoliberal Urban Development and Planning in Post-Socialist Hungary","authors":"G. Olt, A. Csizmady, Márton Bagyura, Lea Kőszeghy","doi":"10.17645/up.7708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7708","url":null,"abstract":"By critically reflecting on the concept of “post-socialist neoliberalism” proposed by this thematic issue, we argue against the widely assumed hegemony of neoliberalism, not just in the post-socialist context, but anywhere. We suggest taking features that do not fit in the narratives of neoliberalism seriously and highlighting more-than-neoliberal rationales, too. We present cases from the literature focusing on post-socialist and illiberal contexts, especially in Hungary. As the critical reading of the literature and the secondary and primary data about Hungary shows, narratives of capitalist class domination and accumulation can be less than adequate. The maintenance of clientelist or neopatrimonial relations dominated by political power with politically created rents is a separate issue. Therefore, instead of assuming “in the last instance” determination by neoliberalism, which is only camouflaged with theoretically irrelevant contextual issues, we argue for the examination of neopatrimonial relations besides neoliberalism to better understand the mechanisms behind urban development. In doing so, we can explain how power is maintained without actual development, how corruption as a mode of rule is politically accepted, and why political struggles need to consider other aspects besides fighting capitalist class domination.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141339315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To inform and operationalize an urban degrowth agenda, more systematic and larger-scale experimentation with degrowth practices is needed. The aim of this study was to explore the suitability of shrinking cities as testing grounds for urban degrowth practices. To answer this question, we analyzed two cases, both urban greening initiatives, located in the shrinking urban region of Parkstad Limburg, in the Netherlands. The cases show that in a shrinking city, with a large surplus of urban land and long-term vacancy and demolishing of buildings, there is literally abundant “room” to experiment with alternative ways and types of urban land use. There is also interest on the side of the local government in alternatives to the conventional approaches to urban planning and development. As both cases can be interpreted as “experiments with urban degrowth practices,” it can be concluded that shrinking cities offer ample opportunities for urban degrowth experiments. The lessons learned from the two studied cases are not very positive concerning the wider feasibility of the tested degrowth practices, but as experiments, the cases can be considered successful. This is because they provided a better understanding of the conditions required for the implementation and upscaling of these practices, also in growing cities. To inform and operationalize an urban degrowth agenda, we, therefore, recommend more research on cases in shrinking cities that can be interpreted and analyzed as experiments with urban degrowth practices.
{"title":"The Shrinking City as a Testing Ground for Urban Degrowth Practices","authors":"Maurice Hermans, J. de Kraker, Christian Scholl","doi":"10.17645/up.8008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.8008","url":null,"abstract":"To inform and operationalize an urban degrowth agenda, more systematic and larger-scale experimentation with degrowth practices is needed. The aim of this study was to explore the suitability of shrinking cities as testing grounds for urban degrowth practices. To answer this question, we analyzed two cases, both urban greening initiatives, located in the shrinking urban region of Parkstad Limburg, in the Netherlands. The cases show that in a shrinking city, with a large surplus of urban land and long-term vacancy and demolishing of buildings, there is literally abundant “room” to experiment with alternative ways and types of urban land use. There is also interest on the side of the local government in alternatives to the conventional approaches to urban planning and development. As both cases can be interpreted as “experiments with urban degrowth practices,” it can be concluded that shrinking cities offer ample opportunities for urban degrowth experiments. The lessons learned from the two studied cases are not very positive concerning the wider feasibility of the tested degrowth practices, but as experiments, the cases can be considered successful. This is because they provided a better understanding of the conditions required for the implementation and upscaling of these practices, also in growing cities. To inform and operationalize an urban degrowth agenda, we, therefore, recommend more research on cases in shrinking cities that can be interpreted and analyzed as experiments with urban degrowth practices.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141108939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Spatial transformation follows the logic of a growth-oriented economy that values cities according to their place in the chain of capitalist wealth production. Many cities in East Germany have lost their significance as sites of production and are consequently facing population decline and the weakening of social bonds in the community. For this reason, citizens of the East German small town of Zella-Mehlis (state of Thuringia) have begun to reflect on alternative models for urban development. In this article, the process of arriving at a degrowth strategy, as provided by the academic discourse, will be documented. It will be demonstrated that the process of shrinkage has not only left little space for a degrowth planning approach put into practice. Moreover, the article reveals that the costs of the growth economy on society are not limited to population shrinkage, but also have a severe impact on the sociability of the local community. The rise of right-wing populists and climate change-denying actors mirrors the decreasing social ability for collective learning processes needed for a shift to a solidary degrowth strategy. However, the case study shows how ambivalent these developments are: Long-term participatory processes within the public–civic partnership framework of the Aufwind (German for upwind) initiative in Zella-Mehlis can challenge path dependencies and open new degrowth-inspired perspectives. The article is informed by many years of intensive field research in a qualitative mixed-method design and focuses on the close links between shrinkage processes, the local degrowth agenda, and the consequences of an eroding democracy.
{"title":"Upwind Despite Headwind? Degrowth Transformations Amidst Shrinkage and Eroding Democracy in an East German Small Town","authors":"Anton Brokow-Loga, Frank Eckardt","doi":"10.17645/up.7788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7788","url":null,"abstract":"Spatial transformation follows the logic of a growth-oriented economy that values cities according to their place in the chain of capitalist wealth production. Many cities in East Germany have lost their significance as sites of production and are consequently facing population decline and the weakening of social bonds in the community. For this reason, citizens of the East German small town of Zella-Mehlis (state of Thuringia) have begun to reflect on alternative models for urban development. In this article, the process of arriving at a degrowth strategy, as provided by the academic discourse, will be documented. It will be demonstrated that the process of shrinkage has not only left little space for a degrowth planning approach put into practice. Moreover, the article reveals that the costs of the growth economy on society are not limited to population shrinkage, but also have a severe impact on the sociability of the local community. The rise of right-wing populists and climate change-denying actors mirrors the decreasing social ability for collective learning processes needed for a shift to a solidary degrowth strategy. However, the case study shows how ambivalent these developments are: Long-term participatory processes within the public–civic partnership framework of the Aufwind (German for upwind) initiative in Zella-Mehlis can challenge path dependencies and open new degrowth-inspired perspectives. The article is informed by many years of intensive field research in a qualitative mixed-method design and focuses on the close links between shrinkage processes, the local degrowth agenda, and the consequences of an eroding democracy.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140975041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores three examples of urban design initiatives in Genoa in an attempt to highlight the potential and possible contradictions that controlled shrinking projects pose for the future of contemporary cities. Genoa, a symbol of Italian shrinking cities, has been strongly defined over the years by post-industrialisation transformations and by long-standing conditions of urban shrinkage. Despite facing continuous shrinkage, local urban development policies have historically focused exclusively on urban growth and expansion. Only recently have some areas in Genoa started to adopt spatial planning experiences that actively pursue degrowth policies, aiming to reduce existing urban fabric and decrease urban density. These initiatives are adopted in specific areas affected by demographic decline, hydrogeological risks, pollution, or catastrophic events. These spatial strategies justify their existence by invoking concepts like smart shrinkage and degrowth, promising improvements in both environmental and social conditions. However, this article notes how these concepts in Genoa are not aligned with the actual social and environmental challenges that these considerations and positions pose. In fact, the urban renewal initiatives introduced by institutions, in reality, lean towards a strategy of shrinkage and demolition of residential complexes, transportation infrastructure, and productive spaces, with diverse and conflicting results. The observed controlled shrinking projects neglect the synthesis of the territory as a palimpsest, ignore new ecological sensitivities, and lack awareness of the social implications associated with the concepts of smart shrinkage and degrowth. Instead, the three instances introduce a spatial project that still adheres to the underlying principles of growth and exploitation, presenting a shrinkage of the existing urban fabric that is mere illusion. It involves clearing out the deteriorated spaces only to fill them with capitalist rhetoric and models that, instead of creating space, undermine fundamental rights. Nonetheless, a closer examination of these three missed opportunities sheds light on the necessary knowledge, actions, and design approaches for a city to navigate urban shrinkage adeptly. This exploration also reveals the potential for the city to transform into a framework and platform, inspiring and guiding new urban planning paradigms for sustainable development.
{"title":"Does Reduced Space Result in Fewer Rights? Controlled Shrinking in the Urban Renewal of Genoa","authors":"Agim Kërçuku","doi":"10.17645/up.7803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7803","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores three examples of urban design initiatives in Genoa in an attempt to highlight the potential and possible contradictions that controlled shrinking projects pose for the future of contemporary cities. Genoa, a symbol of Italian shrinking cities, has been strongly defined over the years by post-industrialisation transformations and by long-standing conditions of urban shrinkage. Despite facing continuous shrinkage, local urban development policies have historically focused exclusively on urban growth and expansion. Only recently have some areas in Genoa started to adopt spatial planning experiences that actively pursue degrowth policies, aiming to reduce existing urban fabric and decrease urban density. These initiatives are adopted in specific areas affected by demographic decline, hydrogeological risks, pollution, or catastrophic events. These spatial strategies justify their existence by invoking concepts like smart shrinkage and degrowth, promising improvements in both environmental and social conditions. However, this article notes how these concepts in Genoa are not aligned with the actual social and environmental challenges that these considerations and positions pose. In fact, the urban renewal initiatives introduced by institutions, in reality, lean towards a strategy of shrinkage and demolition of residential complexes, transportation infrastructure, and productive spaces, with diverse and conflicting results. The observed controlled shrinking projects neglect the synthesis of the territory as a palimpsest, ignore new ecological sensitivities, and lack awareness of the social implications associated with the concepts of smart shrinkage and degrowth. Instead, the three instances introduce a spatial project that still adheres to the underlying principles of growth and exploitation, presenting a shrinkage of the existing urban fabric that is mere illusion. It involves clearing out the deteriorated spaces only to fill them with capitalist rhetoric and models that, instead of creating space, undermine fundamental rights. Nonetheless, a closer examination of these three missed opportunities sheds light on the necessary knowledge, actions, and design approaches for a city to navigate urban shrinkage adeptly. This exploration also reveals the potential for the city to transform into a framework and platform, inspiring and guiding new urban planning paradigms for sustainable development.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140992651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the role of bureaucracy in the process of reforming Moscow’s transportation system. With reliance on the intellectual history of neoliberalism, the concept of “orchestration,” an institutionalist economics, and an empirical case study, I argue that a market embodies itself in the form of bureaucracy. The agency in the provision of norms and regulations, calculations and forecasts, orders of economic exchange, and knowledge production concentrates in the hands of bureaucrats regardless of their formal attachment to state or private entities. Bureaucrats define fundamental issues of how markets should function; they design and control the system of money redistribution. The case of dismantling Moscow’s trolleybus system provides fruitful data on the agency of bureaucracy in transportation reform under the label of implementing “best practice” scenarios favourable to a neoliberal toolkit.
{"title":"Orchestration of Markets and Bureaucratic Knowledge Production in the Moscow Transportation Reform","authors":"Egor Muleev","doi":"10.17645/up.7635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7635","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the role of bureaucracy in the process of reforming Moscow’s transportation system. With reliance on the intellectual history of neoliberalism, the concept of “orchestration,” an institutionalist economics, and an empirical case study, I argue that a market embodies itself in the form of bureaucracy. The agency in the provision of norms and regulations, calculations and forecasts, orders of economic exchange, and knowledge production concentrates in the hands of bureaucrats regardless of their formal attachment to state or private entities. Bureaucrats define fundamental issues of how markets should function; they design and control the system of money redistribution. The case of dismantling Moscow’s trolleybus system provides fruitful data on the agency of bureaucracy in transportation reform under the label of implementing “best practice” scenarios favourable to a neoliberal toolkit.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140996736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The population of Finland will start to decline in the near future, and most Finnish municipalities are already losing population. Can the tools used for land-use planning, which are historically designed to guide and control growth, be used to guide shrinking? The shrinking city-region of Kotka-Hamina has drafted a city-regional strategic master plan to manage the shrinking. The master plan and its documents are analyzed, and interviews are used to better understand how the plan is trying to achieve its objectives. The master plan is currently growth-oriented and used as a tool for place marketing. According to the interviews, growth is not essential to implement the plan. As a tool, it strives to show the potential of the city-region. The master plan guides future land use to denser areas and enables industry. Learning from this case study, strategic land-use planning can be seen as a feasible tool to manage shrinking, and the master plan hints at how that might be done, although it does need improvement. Since land-use planning has country-specific characteristics, the research findings may not be directly transferable to other planning systems. However, the findings may offer ideas on how planning tools can be adapted to similarly challenging conditions. The possibility of what strategic spatial planning has to offer in a shrinking context should be researched more to enable the development of planning tools that would be more usable in shrinking conditions.
{"title":"Enabling Multiple Outcomes: Strategic Spatial Planning in a Shrinking City-Region","authors":"Janne Oittinen, R. Mäntysalo","doi":"10.17645/up.7694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7694","url":null,"abstract":"The population of Finland will start to decline in the near future, and most Finnish municipalities are already losing population. Can the tools used for land-use planning, which are historically designed to guide and control growth, be used to guide shrinking? The shrinking city-region of Kotka-Hamina has drafted a city-regional strategic master plan to manage the shrinking. The master plan and its documents are analyzed, and interviews are used to better understand how the plan is trying to achieve its objectives. The master plan is currently growth-oriented and used as a tool for place marketing. According to the interviews, growth is not essential to implement the plan. As a tool, it strives to show the potential of the city-region. The master plan guides future land use to denser areas and enables industry. Learning from this case study, strategic land-use planning can be seen as a feasible tool to manage shrinking, and the master plan hints at how that might be done, although it does need improvement. Since land-use planning has country-specific characteristics, the research findings may not be directly transferable to other planning systems. However, the findings may offer ideas on how planning tools can be adapted to similarly challenging conditions. The possibility of what strategic spatial planning has to offer in a shrinking context should be researched more to enable the development of planning tools that would be more usable in shrinking conditions.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141017516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The initial source for the continuous reproduction of contradictions in the central area of New Belgrade’s urban development was the mismatch between the dynamics of political and economic reforms and the static urban planning system that has been banded to the most progressive but rigid functionalist ideals that could not adapt to the emergent pace of these reforms. Consequently, during the socialist and post-socialist periods, the central area of New Belgrade grew irregularly by developing contradictory fragments rather than totality. The inconsistency of the socialist authorities in completing the capital city according to the urban plan despite political imperatives has continued with the post-socialist governing tendencies towards irregularity, privatization, and commercialization of urban development. A series of individual, short-term, and profitable urban projects that have opposed the socialist urban structure, have reused inherited socialist urban infrastructure as a fertile ground for their growth. More than presenting a new insight into the history of urban development of the central area of New Belgrade, this study uses it as the prime case to disclose the unsustainability of the urban planning system during the socialist past and post-socialist present. An alternative urban planning system would embrace the challenges of the continuous reproduction of contradiction by affirming an institutional network of platforms for collaboration among citizens, urban planners, authorities, and developers.
{"title":"The Continuous Reproduction of Contradictions in the Urban Development of New Belgrade’s Central Area","authors":"Ivan Kucina","doi":"10.17645/up.7629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7629","url":null,"abstract":"The initial source for the continuous reproduction of contradictions in the central area of New Belgrade’s urban development was the mismatch between the dynamics of political and economic reforms and the static urban planning system that has been banded to the most progressive but rigid functionalist ideals that could not adapt to the emergent pace of these reforms. Consequently, during the socialist and post-socialist periods, the central area of New Belgrade grew irregularly by developing contradictory fragments rather than totality. The inconsistency of the socialist authorities in completing the capital city according to the urban plan despite political imperatives has continued with the post-socialist governing tendencies towards irregularity, privatization, and commercialization of urban development. A series of individual, short-term, and profitable urban projects that have opposed the socialist urban structure, have reused inherited socialist urban infrastructure as a fertile ground for their growth. More than presenting a new insight into the history of urban development of the central area of New Belgrade, this study uses it as the prime case to disclose the unsustainability of the urban planning system during the socialist past and post-socialist present. An alternative urban planning system would embrace the challenges of the continuous reproduction of contradiction by affirming an institutional network of platforms for collaboration among citizens, urban planners, authorities, and developers.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140661596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：